A satirical tweet claiming that the top five rankers of the medical entrance exam NEET are Muslims has gone viral on social media. The viral post takes a dig at Sudarshan TV and claims right wing followers will now boycott the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) because the top five students are Muslims.
The post which has since gone viral is a satire and uses the names of Pakistani and England cricketers to claim that they are toppers in the NEET examinations.
The NEET exams which is the medical entrance exam declared results on October 16 with Odisha's Soyeb Aftab and Delhi's Akanksha Singh securing 720/720 to grab top honours.
Soon after the results were announced, a parody account @niiravmodi made the satirical tweet at 6:42 pm. The text of the tweet reads: As NEET results are declared, we must look this interesting fact about Results. Rank 1 - Shoaib Aftab Rank 2 - Zeeshan Ashraf Rank 3 - Yasir Hameed Rank 4 - Sajid Mehmood Rank 5 - Sana Mir Modi Ji, Just tell me why only Hindus? RT coz nobody will tell you this. #NEETResult2020
The account @niiravmodi also tweeted about fact-checkers fact-checking his tweet and later also shared a Zee5 fact-check with the caption, "Good morning, have a nice day" confirming that the original tweet was satirical in nature.
This list has been shared hundreds of times on Twitter with some users mockingly using the hashtags #NEETJihad and #ResultJihad. Moreover, some accounts have also been misled to believe that the rank list is genuine and have gone on to congratulate the "rank-holders."
An archive of this tweet can be accessed here.
An archive of this tweet can be accessed here.
An archive of this tweet can be accessed here.
The hashtags #NEETJihad and #ResultJihad are being used sarcastically in response to the UPSC Jihad report by Sudharshan TV's Suresh Chavhanke. In his report, Chavhanke claimed that India's public service exams favour Muslim candidates.
BOOM's fact-check on the UPSC Jihad show can be read here.
We accessed the merit list put out by the National Testing Agency and found that the names of the applicants who have secured rank two to five does not match the ones shared in the satirical tweet. Akanksha Singh, Tummala Snikitha, Vineet Sharma and Amrisha Khaitan round up the top-five ranks.
Via a Google search of the names of the "rank-holders" in the viral tweet, BOOM found that Zeeshan Ashraf, Yasir Hameed and Sana Mir are Pakistani cricketers with Mir being the former captain of the women's team. We also found that Sajid Mehmood is an English cricketer of Pakistani origin.
The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) is an exam for students who wish to gain admission into medical and dental courses in public and private colleges in India. The National Testing Agency conducts the exam for 80,055 seats in 542 medical colleges available across India.
After being postponed twice before due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the NEET was held on September 13 with strict precautions in place.
