On 24 September, Aaj Tak anchor Chitra Tripathi shared a video of her speech on social media and wrote that she got a chance to speak in the UK Parliament on the occasion of 75 years of independent India. There she told that the British are shining because they have India’s Kohinoor.
This claim of Chitra Tripathi was fact-checked by the Digital Forensic Research and Analytics Center (FRAC) which termed it a false claim.
The FRAC said, “To investigate the claim, we searched for photographs of the UK Parliament House and we found these images clearly do not match the area shown in the video shared by Chitra Tripathi.”
The FRAC further wrote, “We then used different frames of the picture and found that this area coincides with the dining area of the House of Commons, where people are generally provided with the opportunity to speak.”
The FRAC has written citing a report that the House of Commons has kept the dining area open to the public for lunch. In its conclusion, FRAC has termed Chitra Tripathi’s claim as misleading.
Chitra Tripathi’s reaction has come to the fore on this fact check. She told the fact-checker a lie by tweeting.
The anchor of Aaj Tak tweeted and said, “Just like a monkey cannot know the taste of ginger, similarly you cannot explain to bull wits. Ever since I shared the speech of UK Parliament, some people have stomach ache. May God give some wisdom to such a bull’s intellect.”
With this tweet, she has also shared a screenshot of her invitation letter and wrote “My Invitation, after which I went there with special permission”. However, the invitation doesn’t mention Chitra’s name on it.
In another tweet, she wrote that, “I gave a 7-minute speech there. There were more than 200 people from all over the country and the world. UK MPs were also sitting. There were many big businessmen. I mentioned the UK Parliament several times in my speech. But here the livelihood of some people runs by defaming a journalist who does good work.”
But Chitra Tripathi has nowhere confirmed that she addressed the people in the House of Commons dining area.
Responding to this tweet of Chitra Tripathi, a handle named Sameer wrote, “You were giving a speech in the canteen of the Parliament where the workers working in the Parliament were eating food, I was also present here is the invitation.”
The HW News portal also fact-checked Chitra’s claim. They scoured the official website of the UK Parliament where they found important information. They found that special symbols are used in invitation letters if a guest is invited by members of Parliament or by parliamentary committees. Here companies, organizations registered in the UK can also book a place in the Parliament complex.