Fact Check: Government has not sold Railways to Adani Group
A picture of a railway platform ticket with 'Adani Railway' written on it in Hindi has gone viral. Many social media...
By Newsmeter Network Published on 29 Dec 2020 3:50 AM GMT
Hyderabad: A picture of a railway platform ticket with 'Adani Railway' written on it in Hindi has gone viral. Many social media users are criticising the government for 'selling' the railways to the Adani Group. A few users have also claimed that the Adani Group has increased the ticket price from Rs 10 to Rs 50.
Click here to view the archive of the above post. (archive)
Fact Check:
NewsMeter found that the viral image has been doctored and that the government has not sold the railways to the Adani Group.
NewsMeter performed a reverse image search on the picture and found a Facebook post that showed the original picture from August 2020. In that image the words 'Adani Railway' were not mentioned. Below is a comparison of the original and fake viral picture.
Journalist Prashant Kanojia, on 17 August, had posted the original image and criticised the government for increasing the price of platform tickets to Rs 50. Responding to this, the spokesperson of Indian Railways clarified via a tweet saying, "The purpose of keeping the platform ticket price of ā¹50 at Pune Junction is to discourage huge crowds at the station and maintain social distancing. The railway platform has been controlling ticket rates since the early days of the Corona epidemic."
The Indian Express, Times Now and Hindustan Times also published a report about this issue in August.
"The Indian Railways on Tuesday clarified that the increase in the cost of platform tickets at Pune junction has been done to dissuade people from coming unnecessarily onto the platforms and to ensure social distancing is followed amid the ongoing Covid-19 crisis. The clarification from Railways came after senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh had stated that the price of platform tickets had been exorbitantly raised from Rs 3 in the Congress rule to Rs 50 by the incumbent BJP government," read a report by the Hindustan Times.
This is not the first time industrialist Gautam Adani and his group have been dragged into misleading posts related to "privatisation of Indian Railways". NewsMeter had previously debunked fake news related to the group. Click here to view these reports.
Hence, it is clear that the government has not sold the railways to the Adani Group.
