“Alt News” is a leftist website which claims to be on a mission to take on the ‘Fake news ecosystem of India’. But ironically even though the website claims to bust fake news, one of its co-founders is an expert at spreading it.

The co-founder in question who runs the Facebook ‘parody’ page Unofficial: Subramanian Swamy, has been exposed on multiple occasions for spreading lies.

First the co-founder was caught spreading fake news about former Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa, and then for spreading a lie about a protest in Delhi, while the quoted video was actually of a Mumbai Maratha Kranti Morcha.

Old habits die hard and the Facebook page is back to spreading lies, and this time it’s about the Modi government approving 100% FDI in single brand retail:

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As seen above, the Facebook page is seen alleging that the Modi government has now approved 100% FDI in multi brand retail, but its stance while being in opposition was of opposing a 49% approval in single brand retail.

This allegation is wrong on multiple counts. First, the Modi government hasn’t approved 100% FDI in multi brand retail, but has actually done so in single brand retail. The second allegation is, that the BJP has been opposing FDI in single brand retail. But the truth is that its main opposition has been to FDI for multi-brand retailers, which was reiterated by finance minister Arun Jaitley in 2015.

Thus the allegation that the BJP has made an u-turn when it comes to its stance on FDI in retail, doesn’t really stand the test of facts. And similar attacks made by the co-founder of alt-news don’t make much sense:

Also just to mention, colloquially speaking, the chief difference between single brand and multi brand retail, is that in the former’s case, a single umbrella brand can only sell the products coming under it. Like Ikea with the help of single brand retail sells only its own products but companies like Wallmart which sell products of different brands come under the ambit of multi-brand retail.

Incidentally the misleading post by the co-founder of Alt News was edited to reflect the correct facts on Thursday evening, which is around the time when people on Twitter started to expose the lie:

While the co-founder of Alt News has now become notorious for spreading Fake News, its founder is known to target prominent twitter users by revealing their personal details and has also been accused of cyber stalking by one individual.