Yet another article purportedly written by senior journalist and former India Bureau Chief of BBC, Mark Tully supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and attacking Nehru-Gandhi family and the Congress is circulating on social media.<\/p>\n
Alt News, which cross-checked with Mark Tully, said the article was falsely attributed to him. Tully has written no such piece.<\/p>\n
Incidentally, this is the second time fake news factory has used his name to circulate an article backing Modi and attacking his opponents.<\/p>\n
The present article titled \u201cPost No Confidence Motion: The road ahead\u201d criticises the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi<\/a>, calling the recent No Confidence Motion introduced in the Lok Sabha a \u2018debacle\u2019. It pulls no punches, berating the Gandhi family in the introductory paragraph which states, \u201cI am going to stick my neck out to predict that this ill conceived No Confidence Motion is going to be the point which is going to be looked back at, as the turning point for the end of the Gandhis influence and corrupt ecosystem. Rahul Gandhi will never ever be the PM, or even be in a position to be king maker. Not ever.\u201d<\/p>\n Many Facebook users have shared this \u2018article\u2019 crediting Mark Tully.<\/p>\n Alt News found the same article shared by a Facebook user Sanjay Mehra on July 21, 2018, without an attribution to Mark Tully. Mehra claimed in the comments section that the article was written by him and not Mark Tully.<\/p>\n Alt News reported that in a conversation with its representative, Mark Tully dismissed the article attributed to him saying, \u201cOver the last 4-5 years, there have been a series of articles put on the internet in my name which I have never written. I have reported this to the Government and have spoken to the Information Minister about this but nothing has been done yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Attributing quotes, letters and articles to public figures has been a persistent trend on social media of late. In this particular instance, the objective was to inject credibility and authority to what is essentially an opinion by a social media user.<\/p>\n Short of intellectual talent in ranks and perhaps looking for credibility and traction among the more sensible lot, some followers of Prime Minister Narendra Modi<\/a> \u2013 who have earned the sobriquet \u2018bhakts\u2019 for making statements in complete disregard to facts \u2013 have been trying to rope in persons of repute from outside their fold in support of their claims.<\/p>\n The party itself has tried to appropriate Congress stalwarts like Sardar Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose, Lal Bahadur Shastri to try and run down Jawaharlal Nehru and his descendants.<\/p>\n Two years ago, in 2016, a similar article was circulating on social media, including Facebook, which claimed Mark Tully has written about \u201cchanges happening in Modi\u2019s regime\u201d in his book – No Full Stops in India.<\/p>\n Excerpts like \u201cFor all its great achievements, the *Nehru dynasty* has stood like a Banyan tree. And all Indians know that nothing grows under the Banyan tree\u201d and \u201cThe time has come to continue to support the man (Narendra Modi) and keep your faith intact\u201d explain the pro-BJP nature of the post.<\/p>\n