Fact Check: Viral Post Alleging Priyanka Gandhi Criticised Kumbh Mela Cites Fake Account
The post contains a screenshot that purports to show a social media post by Priyanka Gandhi. The post accuses the newly elected MP of mounting a ‘direct attack on Sanatan’.
- The Verdict: Fake The screenshot is fabricated. The account shown is not Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s official social media account, and it was created as an impersonation.
What’s the claim?
A screenshot of a purported post by newly-elected Congress Member of Parliament (MP) Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is going viral, claiming it shows her comments criticising the current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government and the Kumbh Mela, a major Hindu pilgrimage held in India. The Kumbh Mela in 2025 is scheduled to be held from January 13 to February 26.
The screenshot shows a post allegedly shared by Gandhi on X, written in Hindi, that roughly translates to: “India is a country of fools where the government spends crores of rupees on the royal baths of hypocrites but not on drinking water.”
The post is accompanied by a caption reading: “Priyanka Vadra’s first post on Kumbh Mela, what should Hindus understand?” A red text overlay on the image reads, “Priyanka Gandhi’s direct attack on Sanatan as soon as she became an MP for the first time.”
An X user shared the screenshot with a caption that roughly translates to, “See Priyanka Vadra’s post on Kumbh Mela. Chanakya was right *A child born from a foreign womb cannot be a patriot*.” This post was also shared on Facebook on December 9, 2024, with similar claims. Archived versions of similar posts can be accessed here and here.
Gandhi took oath as a Lok Sabha member after being elected from Kerala’s Wayanad constituency in the November 2024 by-elections.
However, our investigation found that the post circulating online is from a fake account impersonating the MP. Gandhi has not posted anything about the Kumbh Mela on her official social media accounts.
What we found
Logically Facts examined the account displayed in the post, “@PriyankagaINC”, and found that it is neither verified nor linked to Gandhi’s official X account. Her official account is @priyankagandhi (archived here), which has a grey verification tick mark, indicating that it is a government or multilateral organisation account, as per X’s verification guidelines. A search of her official account for recent posts about the Kumbh Mela yielded no results matching the viral claim.
Further investigation revealed that the account “@PriyankagaINC” existed in 2019 but was deleted. Evidence of this is found in a February 2, 2019, X post by user Vidhur Manna (archived here), who referenced the deleted account in a post.
Additionally, the screenshot in question was first shared on February 11, 2019, at 3.11 pm (archived here). She officially joined X (formerly Twitter) on February 11, 2019, and the Indian National Congress party announced her verified account (@priyankagandhi) on the same day (archived here). The official account differs from the one shown in the viral post.
It’s important to note that Gandhi’s first post on her verified X account was shared on March 12, 2019, not February 11, 2019, as the viral claim suggests.
The verdict
A fake post attributed to Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has gone viral, falsely claiming she made comments against the Kumbh Mela. We found no such post on her official social media accounts, and the claim originated from a fake account created in her name.
This report first appeared on logicallyfacts.com, and has been republished on ABP Live as part of a special arrangement. Apart from the headline, no changes have been made in the report by ABP Live.
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