Saket Gokhale Spreads Fake News By Claiming That The Govt Says There Is No Wastage Of Foodgrains In India, Govt Had Only Said There’s No Wastage Because Of Shortage Of Godowns

The left’s attempts to spread fake news by omitting facts and misrepresenting statements are becoming far too predictable.

Self proclaimed activist Saket Gokhale today claimed to have discovered an instance of the Indian government having supposedly lied in Parliament. “Narendra govt lies on the floor of Parliament AGAIN!” he tweeted. “Question was asked in Lok Sabha about the wastage of food grains in FCI godowns. Govt claims there was “zero wastage” in last 5 years. Shocking because 1500 tons were wasted in FCI godowns just during the lockdown last year!” he said.

As proof, Gokhale attached two pictures, one of the question answered by the government of India, and another of an article by far-left propaganda portal the Wire, which said that 1,500 tonnes of food grains were wasted at FCI godowns during the lockdown.

It seemed like Saket Gokhale had caught the government red-handed, and his tweet was retweeted over 800 times on Twitter. But Gokhale’s claims were completely misleading, and they were revealed to be so in the documents he himself had shared.

As discovered by Twitter user Befitting Facts, Gokhale had cleverly taken an answer from a question about food wastage due to “shortage of godowns”, and used the answer to compare against general wastage of foodgrains that occurs in FCI godowns. The question had specifically asked whether huge quantity of foodgrains gets rotten/wasted/spoiled each year due to shortage of godowns/food storage capacity in Food Corporation of India (emphasis added).

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In response, the government had said that there was no wastage because of shortage of godowns. “No quantity of Central Pool Foodgrains stock (wheat and rice gets rotten/wasted/spoiled due to shortage of godowns/food storage capacity (emphasis again added).”

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The question had asked if foodgrains were wasted because of shortage of storage capacity; the government readily replied that there was no shortage because of shortage of food capacity. Like The Wire article which Saket Gokhale had shared said, food grains can get wasted because of several reasons, including getting damaged during transit, or in natural calamities. The government had only said that there had been no wastage because of shortage of godowns; it had not claimed that there was no wastage at all. But Saket Gokhale cleverly took this statement to imply that the government had said that there was no wastage of foodgrains, and added a picture of The Wire article which said that 1,500 tonnes of foodgrains had been wasted. He cleverly didn’t share the entire article, which had clarified that the wastage was because of natural calamities and damages in transit.

This is a pattern that the left is increasingly relying on to spread fake news. Last month, several leftist publications and influencers had spread the fake news that the government had said that there were no deaths due to lack of oxygen in India. This was patently untrue — the government had simply said that the individual states hadn’t given a break-up of the number of Covid deaths which had occurred because of lack of oxygen, but the leftist ecosytem had tried to imply that the government had said that there were no deaths because of lack of oxygen.

Saket Gokhale, though, is a regular offender in spreading fake news. Just last month, he’d been made to delete a tweet by the courts which had spread fake news about the wife of Union Minister Hardeep Puri. Even after a censure by the courts, and the ignominy of having to delete his false claims, Saket Gokhale’s latest shenanigans show he continues to spread fake news with impunity.

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