Lighthouse Journalism came across a letter being widely circulated on social media platforms, including WhatsApp. The content was written on the letterhead of BLDE Association and was claimed to have been sent to Congress leader Sonia Gandhi by Dr MB Patil, now a Karnataka minister. The letter mentioned that the ‘Congress will win the Assembly elections in 2018 by adopting this Divide-Hindus-Unite-Muslims strategy’.
During the investigation we found that the letter was widely shared in 2019 and is fake.
Claim:
X user @KaserVijay shared the letter on his profile.
Check the archive version of the post.
Other users too are sharing the post on their profile.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by running a Google keyword search.
We searched about the BLDE Association.
BLDEA (Bijapur Lingayat Education Association) is a leading education organization in the North Karnataka region. It has a legacy of more than 100 years and 75 education institutions under its banner, which comprise professional institutes, colleges of humanities and social sciences, public schools and research institutes.
Dr MB Patil the president of the organization.
We checked the letterhead of the association uploaded on the website. The letterhead was clearly different.
We then ran a keyword search on the name of the president DR MB Patil and BLDE Association and we found a tweet by Dr MB Patil from 2019.
The minister had clarified that the letter was fake and that he had initiated a legal action about the same.
He had also uploaded an image that suggested that the letterhead used was different.
We also found a few news reports about this.
The report published in April 2019 mentioned that a complaint was filed by state home minister MB Patil at Adarsh Nagar police station, Vijayapura.
Another report in Deccan Herald mentioned that a journalist was arrested in this case.
The report said: The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officials, on Saturday, arrested a 57-year-old journalist with a Delhi-based Hindi and English magazine for sharing a forged letter of M B Patil on the Lingayat issue with Postcard News portal editor.
Conclusion: Old, fake letter in the name of Karnataka state minister MB Patil to Sonia Gandhi resurfaces on the internet amidst General Elections.
