RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat never said Rahul Gandhi is the leader of the future

Hyderabad: A quote attributed to Mohan Bhagwat, the chief of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is circulating on social media. The quote reads, "Rahul Gandhi is the future leader of India, taking him lightly would cost highly. His family history is testimony that taking him lightly would be a great mistake." (Translated from Hindi)

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Fact Check

NewsMeter ran a keyword search about Mohan Bhagwat's statement on Rahul Gandhi but did not find any news report which confirms the claim. We also checked the verified Twitter handle of Mohan Bhagwat and the RSS but did not find any such statement.

Further, we performed a reverse image search of Mohan Bhagwat's photo from one of the viral posts and found the same photo used in an article published by The Times of India on 18 September 2018. The article reported the RSS chief's speech at 'The Future of Bharat: An RSS Perspective' event.

Bhagwat had a word of praise for the Congress party while delivering a speech during the event. He said, "Congress played a big role in the freedom struggle and gave India many great personalities. Some of those people are still our guiding force." However, we did not find any praise or statement on Rahul Gandhi by Mr. Bhagwat.

We also found the video of Mr. Bhagwat's full speech from the event but he did not make any statement about Rahul Gandhi.

Hence, we can conclude that the statement attributed to Mr. Bhagwat is false.