No, Congress party's meeting banner didn't read 'Chor' group

By: Vivek J
July 28 2023

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Context

An image purportedly showing a core committee meeting of the Indian National Congress with a misspelled banner in the background is doing the rounds on social media. The banner in the image shows the words "Chor Group Meeting" below the party's name. The image shows senior Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, AK Antony, KC Venugopal, and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sitting in front of the banner. One Twitter user shared the image with the caption, "Chor group meeting." The image also had the text "Instead of writing Core group meeting, these people have written Chor group meeting. (translated from Hindi)" written on it. Archives of such posts can be accessed here and here. The word 'chor (चोर)' means thief in Hindi. 

While many social media users have shared this image with the 'misspelled' banner, the photo has been digitally altered to include an alleged spelling error.

In Fact

We conducted a simple reverse image search and found that this image has been circulating with the same claim since at least 2021. Multiple versions of this image are available on social media in various Indian languages. While some posts with the image clearly mention that it is meant only for entertainment and fun, others included narratives claiming that a genuine spelling error had made it onto the Congress banner. 

We found multiple news reports from 2019 carrying the same viral image of the five senior Congress leaders. A Wion news report titled "What happened at the CWC meeting: The inside story" published the image on May 25, 2019. The party banner in the image shared in the report did not contain the text "Chor group meeting" or "Core group meeting." The original image had no text below the words "Indian National Congress."

Other news reports carrying the same image did not have the words "Chor Group Meeting" on the banner as well.

We also came across videos of the CWC (Congress Working Committee) meeting held on May 25, 2019. A video of the meeting shared by the Indian National Congress (INC) on its official YouTube channel the same day does not show the text "Chor Group Meeting" either.

A close visual analysis of the image shared on social media, news reports, and videos from 2019 confirms that they all are of the same event, but the text "Chor Group Meeting" only appears on the social media image. It is evident that the text in question was digitally added to the original image. 

A Congress Working Committee meeting was held on May 25, 2019, to discuss the resignation of the then-party president Rahul Gandhi. The committee later unanimously rejected his resignation.

The Verdict

The image shared on social media with the text "Chor Group Meeting" on a Congress party banner has been digitally manipulated. The original image is from a Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting held in 2019, and the banner did not contain the text in question. Therefore, we mark the claim false.