Fact Check: No, Indian Railways has not been taken over by Adani group

The Indian Railways, which was built by crores of people of the country with their own hard work, the BJP government put a stamp of their billionaire friend Adani on it. Tomorrow, gradually a large part of the railways will go to Modi Ji's billionaire friends. Farmers of the country are also fighting to stop farming from going into the hands of Modi Ji's billionaire friends (sic)," reads the text of the video.

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FACT CHECK:

The claim that Indian Railways has been taken over by the Adani Group is false.

NewsMeter searched for reports on this issue and found that no such statement was made by any official source. It should be noted that such important news would definitely be published by the media, thus indicating that the claim is false.

It was noticed that the markings in the viral video read, "WR," "WAP-7," "BRC'' and "30502." Using this information, we performed a keyword search and found that the 'WR' refers to Western Railways, and 'BRC/WAP-7/30502' refers to the locomotive number. This locomotive stands in Vadodara shed (BRC) and has the 'WAP-7' class of the locomotive.

We then found a press release from Adani Wilmar's website that states that locomotive engines with Adani and fortune branding have been flagged off at Vadodara, which has the station code 'BRC,' (same as train in viral video)

Advertisements on Indian Railways are common and according to a report by Financial Express, Indian Railways earns big revenue from locomotive branding. The viral video shows the Fortune Atta ad on the train.

The government's PIB Fact Check also tweeted that the claim circulating with the video was false. "This claim is misleading. This is just a commercial advertisement intended to improve non-fare revenue only," PIB tweeted in Hindi.

Evidently, it is clear that the Indian Railways has not been taken over by the Adani Group.