Fact Check: Viral mobile recharge giveaway by Rahul Gandhi is fake

Hyderabad: A WhatsApp message is being widely circulated on social media with the claim that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has announced a free mobile recharge giveaway for three months in light of the upcoming 2024 general elections.

The message reads, “*Rahul Gandhi* is giving *3 Months Free recharge* to all *Indian users* so that more and more people can vote for *Congress* in the *2024 elections* and *Congress government* can be formed again.*Click* on the link given below to get *3 Months Free Recharge. (Last Date – 16 NOVEMBER 2023)* (sic)”

A link with the post said, “https://www.inc.in@congress2024.limitedoffer.xyz.”

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that Rahul Gandhi is not offering phone recharge.

We conducted a keyword search to find any such official announcement by Rahul Gandhi on any official media handle or on the official handles of the Congress party but could not yield any results for the same.

Through a subsequent search, we tried to spot any media outlet covering the ‘three-month mobile recharge giveaway’ announcement by Rahul Gandhi or Congress but failed to find any. If the message was legit, it would have definitely caught mainstream media’s attention.

Moreover, closely analyzing the link attached to the message, we found the link to be dubious as it does not contain the official Congress domain.

Taking a cue from this, we ran the website through a domain identifier website Whois and found that this domain was registered on 9th November 2023. Also, it is registered in the name of an organization called Privacy Protect.

Through this, we found that the viral giveaway message is fake.