Fact Check: Did TN transport minister halt the free bus scheme for women?

Hyderabad: A news card that says Tamil Nadu transport minister R.S Raja Kannappan has stopped the free bus scheme for women in the state is being widely shared on social media.

It reads, "Transport minister Rajakannappan has said that the scheme for women to travel free on government buses is likely to be stopped soon due to lack of funds."

The post is going viral on Facebook.

Fact Check

The claim is false.

According to a report by Frontline from 18 June 2021, "After swearing in as Tamil Nadu Chief Minister on May 7, 2021, M.K Stalin announced a scheme that enables all working women in the State to travel free of cost in government-owned city and town buses with immediate effect. Since a concrete definition has not been given for the term 'working women', every woman would qualify as a beneficiary in this scheme. The main intention behind this scheme is to increase the work participation rate of women and to promote public transportation."

The launch of the free bus service for women was also reported by Hindustan Times, The New Indian Express, and The News Minute.

We noticed that the viral news card had the logo of 'ABP Nadu'. Taking a cue from this, we searched the media organization's social media pages. While we did not find any news relating to the halting of free bus service for women but we did find a tweet by the editor of ABP Nadu, Manoj Prabhakar S, from 16 February 2022 where he had said that the viral news was a hoax.

We then compared the viral news card with those shared by ABP Nadu and found that the text and graphics in the original news card were different from that of the viral news card.

Apart from this, no mainstream media had reported about the scheme being halted by the Tamil Nadu government or the transport minister.

It is evident that the claim made through the viral post is false. The free bus scheme for women in Tamil Nadu has not been stopped.