Kiren Rijiju

Kiren Rijiju, born on November 9, 1971, in West Kameng, Arunachal Pradesh, is an Indian politician. In his political career, Kiren has been a member of parliament for the Lok Sabha, representing Arunachal West constituency since 2014. His roles in the government have included Minister of State for Home Affairs from 2014 to 2019, Minister of State for Minority Affairs from 2019 to 2021, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Youth Affairs and Sports from 2019 to 2021 and Minister of Law and Justice from 2021 to 2023. As of this year, he holds the position of Cabinet Minister of Earth Sciences and Food Processing Industries.

Earlier this year in January, BOOM found three pictures of Maldives being shared by Kiren Rijiju as Lakshadweep.

When we ran a reverse image search, we found that all three pictures that were going viral posted by Kiren were not from India. Two of them were from Maldives and one from French Polynesia. Kiren Rijiju, also posted two photos, one of a tourist seated inside an orange kayak near an island, and another of a tourist snorkeling in shallow water near an island.

BOOM had fact checked another misleading claim, related to Kiren Rijiju, last year in April. Delhi Education Minister Atishi Marlena shared a video exposing the poor condition of a school run by the Delhi government. We found that Atishi, in a tweet, pointed out that the school was under the BJP-ruled MCD for more than 15 years until the AAP candidate Shelly Oberoi won the mayoral election in February 2023. But the school was under BJP-ruled MCD from 2007 to 2022. A video tweeted by Kiren was part of a live stream from the AAP Delhi's official YouTube channel, telecasted on April 10, 2023. The video shows both Delhi Education Minister Atishi Marlena and Mayor Shelly Oberoi pulling up officials seeing the appalling condition of the school.