An old newspaper clipping carrying a statement by HDFC's former chairman, Deepak Parekh, on the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) election manifesto is being shared online as recent.
BOOM found that the newspaper clipping circulated during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and is unrelated to the BJP's recent election manifesto.
The BJP released its election manifesto or 'Sankalp Patra' on April 14, 2024 at the party headquarters in New Delhi. Key features and objectives of the manifesto include a 'one nation, one election' initiative, implementation of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), in addition to welfare and development.
The clipping carries a statement by Parekh praising the BJP's "detailed" manifesto. It reads, "If BJP comes to power and they are able to achieve even one third or half of what the manifesto said in five years, it would make a great change in the country. The manifesto is an extremely detailed document and touches practically everything that is needed and much thought has gone into preparing this document. It covers all kind of reforms; administrative policies and banking reforms. It talks about enhanced ease of access to banking. They want simplification of tax regimes. I have not seen such a detailed report anywhere. -Deepak Parekh, Chairman, HDFC."
X user @RishiBagree shared a screenshot of Deepak Parekh's quote with the caption, "This is what Deepak Parekh has to say on BJP Manifesto"
BOOM has previously debunked several false and misleading posts shared by Bagree on X. Read here.
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
The post is also circulating on Facebook with similar captions.
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the claims are false, the statement was made by Parekh during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and is unrelated to the BJP's recent election manifesto.
We ran a search for recent news reports about a statement by Deepak Parekh on the BJP and did not find any results.
After this, we tried to ran a keyword search on Google using 'Deepak Parekh on BJP manifesto' and found several posts from April 2014 that were an exact match to the viral image.
Click here for an archive. Other similar posts can be found here and here.
Amit Malviya, the head of BJP's IT Cell, had also shared the newspaper clipping on April 8, 2014.
One of the posts that we found mentioned that the clipping was from the Times of India published on April 8.
The general election in 2014 was held from April 7 to May 12 in 9 phases, and the results were declared on May 16.