Punjab Polls: 'Not surprised', says Manish Tewari on being left out of Congress list
New Delhi, Feb 5: A day after the Congress omitted his name from its list of star campaigners for the upcoming Punjab polls, senior party leader Manish Tewari on Saturday said he would have been "pleasantly surprised" if he had been included.
He also said the reasons for his name not being on the list were not a state secret and had been a public affair for a while now.
The Congress on Friday released a list of 30 star campaigners for the February 20 Punjab Assembly elections and left out names of Tewari and Ghulam Nabi Azad, who are among the prominent members of the 'G-23' leaders who had written to the party leadership seeking an organisational overhaul.
However, some other members of the 'G-23' such as Anand Sharma and Bhupinder Singh Hooda were included in the list.
"I would have been pleasantly surprised if it would have been the other way around. The reasons are also no state secret," Tewari said on Twitter, tagging a news report about the Congress' decision to drop him and Azad from its star campaigners' list.
Earlier, the Congress MP from Anandpur Sahib tweeted photos of himself campaigning in Punjab's Kharar and other areas in his constituency in support of Congress candidates.
Abhijit Mukherjee, Trinamool Congress leader and son of ex-president Pranab Mukherjee, came out in Tewari's support and said such narrow-minded steps will never help the Congress win elections.
"Sad state of affairs in @INCPunjab as they exclude a prominent senior congress leader, MP from Punjab & former minister @ManishTewari Ji from the list of star campaigners in poll bound Punjab," Mukherjee tweeted.
He said, "Such narrow minded steps will never help Congress to win elections!"
Replying to Mukherjee, a former Congress MP, Tewari said, "I would have been surprised if it would have been the other way around. The reasons have been a Public Affair now for quite a while @ABHIJIT_LS Da."
Mukherjee wrote back, saying, "Brother @ManishTewari Ji, our people with their votes are the only answer to such bipartisan mentality!"
"Come what may, you shall always remain indomitable! You have always been one of the finest parliamentarians i have seen & that has been my late father's opinion too," he said.
Besides Sharma and Hooda, Congress' list of star campaigners for the Punjab Assembly elections includes party president Sonia Gandhi, former prime minister Manmohan Singh and senior leader Rahul Gandhi.
The list also includes Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi and party state unit chief Navjot Singh Sidhu.
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Fact Check: viral claim of Bashar al-Assad visit to his aunt’s home in Moscow is false
Claim: The video shows Bashar al-Assad visiting his aunt’s home in Moscow in 2024.
Fact: The claim is false. The video is from 2017 and shows Assad visiting wounded soldiers.
Hyderabad: On December 20, 2024, thousands of Syrians gathered in Damascus’s Umayyad Square, celebrating the establishment of a new government with fireworks and displays of a new flag. The event followed the return of many Syrians to the country after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Amid these celebrations, a video went viral, claiming to show Assad visiting his aunt’s home in Moscow. The video, shared by an X user, was accompanied by the caption: “Bashar al-Assad visits his aunt in her humble home in Moscow, the Republic of Russia, where he took refuge” (translated from Arabic). (Archive)
The 1:30-minute video shows Assad, along with his family, visiting a house and being warmly received by a lady and others in the household.
Similar claims can be seen here and here. (Archive 1, Archive 2)
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the claim is false. The video is not recent nor show Assad visiting his aunt.
A reverse image search led us to the same footage posted on YouTube by the Syrian Presidency channel on September 16, 2018, under the title ‘The hero, Ayham Mahmoud Donia, after his injury, received President al-Assad and his family himself, walking on his feet’.
This hinted that the video is old and unrelated to recent events.
Further, a keyword search led to a report from Al Yawm Al Saabie on June 26, 2017, which described Assad and his family visiting wounded soldiers in the Hama countryside.
The report included the same video, with the description stating that the woman in the footage is the mother of a wounded Syrian soldier.
The report explained that one of the soldiers, Ayham Mahmoud Donia, had been severely injured but defied expectations by walking again to greet Assad. This visit was part of the regime’s ‘Wounded of the Nation Program,’ aimed at supporting soldiers wounded in the conflict.
Therefore, the claim that the video shows Assad visiting his aunt in Moscow is false. The footage is from a 2017 visit where Assad met injured soldiers in Syria.
(This story was originally published by newsmeter, and republished by english.varthabharati.in as part of the Shakti Collective)
