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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Politics & government fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about politics & government. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

12,754 published reviews in this topic

FACTLYPolitics & government

Manmohan Singh’s government performed better than the Modi government on different parameters

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The post compared the two governments using several indicators and argued that Manmohan Singh’s government performed better. The review’s central finding was that the comparison selected figures favourable to Singh’s tenure and unfavourable to Modi’s, rather than presenting a balanced comparison: it says “only those statistics which are in favour of the Manmohan Singh regime are compared with those not so favourable to the Modi regime.” For GDP, the review notes that a 9% growth figure during Singh’s tenure did not describe every year. It contrasts that selective figure with growth of 8.26% in a year during Modi’s tenure, while also citing an RBI estimate of 4.18% for 2019–20. On fuel prices, it reports that petrol rose from Rs. 45.62 per litre at the beginning of 2009 to Rs. 71.52 at the start of 2014, and diesel from Rs. 32.86 to Rs. 53.78. Those increases complicate a comparison that presents fuel prices only as evidence against Modi’s government. The review also qualifies other indicators rather than treating them as straightforward like-for-like measures. It says the Rs. 50 railway platform ticket applied at some stations, including Mumbai and Bhopal, not across the country. It notes that the Global Hunger Index methodology changed before 2016, making rankings across that period unsuitable for direct comparison, even as India’s score improved from 38.9 in 2000 to 27.2 in 2020. The review acknowledges that SSC CGL vacancies fell—from 15,146 in the 2013 notification and 15,549 in 2014 to 7,035 in 2020—but says the post did not specify a recruitment category and that vacancies depend on departmental requirements. Overall, its evidence supports the conclusion that the post’s chosen comparisons were selective, not a comprehensive assessment across the governments’ performance.

dpa-factcheckingPolitics & government

Heiko Maas hat gesagt: «Die Ehe, wenn auch als Kind mit einem älteren Mann aus Liebe, muss legal bleiben!»

Publisher’s rating: Es gibt keinerlei Hinweise darauf, dass das Zitat echt ist. Das Auswärtige Amt erklärt auf Anfrage, dass es sich nicht um eine Äußerung von Maas handele.

The claim concerns a sentence shared beside a portrait of Heiko Maas on Facebook, attributing to him the words that child marriage “must remain legal” when a child loves an older man. The investigation says the image was circulating online and specifically checked whether Maas had made that statement. The German Foreign Office told dpa that the words were not a statement by Maas, “neither in this nor in a similar form.” The article reports that it found no evidence supporting the attribution. The article places the alleged quotation against Maas’s actual position in a 2016 debate, when he was justice minister. It says he faced criticism because he did not support a blanket ban on marriages involving people under 18. The proposal described in the article would have continued to allow marriage from age 16 if a family court found that the intended marriage did not harm the applicant’s welfare. That policy context is distinct from evidence that Maas said the circulated sentence: the article reports that the ministry rejected the quotation itself. The review also traces the image’s possible provenance. It says the graphic with Maas’s photograph probably originated with a known far-right extremist in Halle who had published it on his blog in 2017. The article notes that similar false quotations attributed to Maas, as well as to other politicians, had appeared on that blog. This history helps explain where the image may have come from, but the direct evidence about the quotation is the Foreign Office’s explicit denial.

dpaPolitics & government

De Jonge, Rutte en anderen hebben zichzelf wettelijk uitgesloten van testen.

Publisher’s rating: De claim dat minister Hugo de Jonge, premier Mark Rutte en anderen zichzelf wettelijk hebben uitgesloten van een coronatest is niet helemaal waar. De lijst met uitzonderingen wordt uit zijn context getrokken. Het gaat specifiek om testuitzonderingen voor mensen die naar Nederland reizen. Ook is op de afbeelding in de Facebookpost niet de volledige lijst te zien. Niet alleen diplomaten en overheidsfunctionarissen, maar ook transportpersoneel en grenswerkers staan op de uitzonderingenlijst.

FACTLYPolitics & government

Israel described India with words of praise on the first page of its constitution

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The post claimed that Israel’s constitution praised India, describing it as the only country that stood by Israel in difficult times. FACTLY checked the specific premise behind that claim: whether Israel had a written constitution with a first page on which such praise could appear. The review reports that Israel has no written constitution and instead has a system of basic laws and rights with semi-constitutional status. The review gives a chronology for the effort to draft a constitution. It says that attempts to create a formal document had been unsuccessful since Israel’s establishment in 1948. It also reports that in May 2003 the Knesset’s Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee began the “Constitution by Broad Consensus” project, chaired by Michael Eitan, and that the committee was still meeting. On the evidence presented, there was no written constitution—and therefore no first page of one containing the alleged statement. The article also reports on a separate, related subject: Jewish life in India. It cites an India Today report about Jews living in India and a statement by Israel’s ambassador, Daniel Carmon, describing their history of peaceful coexistence. That material concerns India–Israel and Jewish–Indian relations, not a constitutional passage, and does not substantiate the post’s claim about what a constitution said.

Vishvas NewsPolitics & government

பாஜக அண்டை நாடுகளுக்கு தனது கட்சியை விரிவுபடுத்துகிறது. இலங்கையில் ‘இலங்கை பாரதிய ஜனதா கட்சி’ என்ற பெயரில் ஒரு புதிய கட்சி உருவாக்கி உள்ளது” என்று கூறுகிறது. இந்த ட்வீட்டின் காப்பகப்படுத்தப்பட்ட பதிப்பை இங்கே காணலாம்.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE