Fact Check: Image Viral With Misleading Claim Of President Kovind Not Allowed To Walk On Red Carpet

An image of President Ram Nath Kovind and Home Minister Amit Shah from the inauguration day of Motera Stadium, Ahmedabad, on February 24, 2021, has gone viral on social media. In the image, Home Minister is walking on the red carpet, while one can see the President is walking on the bare ground. While different posts have captioned the image differently but all insinuating that President Ram Nath Kovind was not allowed to walk on the red carpet on which Amit Shah was walking because Kovind belongs to the SC/ST community.

A Twitter user, Ishrat Khan, shared the image with the caption in Hindi, which translates in English as, "The president of the country has left the red carpet for Modi and Amit Shah, and is walking on the floor. The country is blessed to have such a slave president."

Facebook user Rani Rajesh shared the image with a sarcastic caption in Hindi, which translates in English as, "Ahmedabad: Modi government honoured Sardar Patel by renaming the stadium on Modi's name and the same day Home Minister Shah also gave full respect by walking on the red carpet and making President Kovind Ji walk out of the red carpet..... Only BJP can give this much respect." This post is shared over 6,200 times at the time of reporting.

Many Facebook users are sharing the post.

The post is also rife among Twitter users.

Claim:

President Ram Nath Kovind was not allowed to walk on the red carpet on the inauguration day of Motera stadium.

Fact Check:

The viral image had the NDTV logo on the top right corner. Hence, searching with the keyword, 'NDTV, Motera stadium', we came across a video of NDTV published on February 24, 2021. At around 3:06 timestamp, one can see both Shah and Kovind entering the stadium, walking on the red carpet. The viral clip is of the stadium's inauguration day when President Kovind and the Home Minister arrived for the Bhoomi pujan ceremony.

We came across the full video of 1 hour 41 minutes of the inauguration day uploaded by DD News. In the full video, one can see various instances where President Kovind is seen walking on the red carpet.

Even at the beginning of the video, one can see that the Home Minister was guiding Ram Nath Kovind.

Apart from Amit Shah, Gujarat Governor Acharya Devvrat and Minister of State for Sports Kiran Rijiju were also present at the event. At around 16 minutes, one can also see that all the ministers on stage were standing when the President came to the stage. Earlier, they were sitting.

Hence, a brief instance where the President is not on the red carpet has gone viral with the misleading claim of President Ram Nath Kovind not allowed to use the red carpet on the inauguration day of Motera stadium due to his SC/ST background.

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