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Updated: Jul 24, 2015 01:14 IST

Senior Congress leader Ajay Maken was left red-faced on Thursday after posting a tribute on Facebook to Chandra Shekhar Azad with an image of the freedom fighter’s contemporary Bhagat Singh.

Maken deleted the tribute marking Azad’s birth anniversary after users of Facebook and Twitter pointed out the glaring error.

The brief post on Maken’s official Facebook page, accompanied by the image of Bhagat Singh, read: “My tributes to Chandra Shekhar Azad on his Birth Anniversary.”

Pappu ji ke asli chele sir aap hi hai @ajaymaken , waise ye Bhagat singh hai, Azad ji nahi pic.twitter.com/4sARY8GmiJ — Tajinder Pal S Bagga (@tajinderbagga) July 23, 2015

It received 583 likes and was shared 58 times before it was deleted. Maken, the president of the Delhi Congress committee and a former Union minister, is one of the most prominent faces of the Congress party and a close aide of party vice president Rahul Gandhi.

Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh made a similar mistake, posting a tribute to Azad on his Facebook page that featured an image of Bhagat Singh. He subsequently deleted it and made a fresh post with the correct image.

Azad is considered to be the mentor of Bhagat Singh, who was hanged in Lahore in 1931 for killing British police officer John Saunders.

Singh and Azad had planned to kill a police official named James Scott, who ordered a baton charge on a group of protestors that resulted in the death of freedom fighter Lala Lajpat Rai.

But Singh mistakenly shot and killed Saunders in Lahore in 1928. Both Azad and Singh were members of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, a revolutionary group.

Singh is usually depicted wearing a hat and this was the image used in Maken’s post on Facebook. The most common depiction of Azad is a photo of him twirling his moustache.

college me union giri ki padhai nahi ki to yahi haal hona hai @ajaymaken@OfficeOfRG@JhaSanjayhttps://t.co/KJ5zHqUqZo — KAUSHLIYA (@kkidnani) July 23, 2015

@tajinderbagga Mr @ajaymaken This is what happens when you have buddhu @officeofrg as your leader. — Vasudevan, A. R. (@arvasudevan) July 23, 2015

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