The post on Amit Shah seems to have been circulated in retaliation to the flak Rahul Gandhi drew for using his phone during President Kovind’s address.

New Delhi: A photograph of Union Home Minister and BJP national president Amit Shah purportedly sleeping in Parliament has emerged on Twitter, with users crying hypocrisy over BJP supporters’ double standards.

“@RahulGandhi using his phone is a problem but then @AmitShah sleeping is not!” says the post, referring to when Gandhi fiddled with his phone during President Ram Nath Kovind’s address on 20 June.

The photograph, a screenshot supposedly from a recent Parliament session, Shah’s eyes appear to be closed and his body slumped as Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad speaks in the Rajya Sabha.

The post has been retweeted over 800 times and liked more than 2,600 times.

A different version of the tweet, which says “If @RahulGandhi is using his mobile it’s an insult to the parliament but if @AmitShah takes a nap it’s alright…Heights of Hypocrisy” has been shared over 600 times, with 1,400 likes.

If @RahulGandhi is using his mobile it's an insult to the parliament but if @AmitShah takes a nap it's alright…

Heights of Hypocrisy 😡😡 pic.twitter.com/uggAEtz40u — 𝖀𝖓𝖎𝖈💞𝖗𝖓 (@snapnchat) June 21, 2019

A misrepresentation

However, the photograph of Shah “sleeping” is actually a screengrab from a moment when he was blinking and looking down, thus making it seem like he was asleep.

Footage of the Parliament session from which the screengrab was taken shows Shah looking up a second later, making it clear that he wasn’t sleeping. Further, the footage is from the winter session of Parliament which concluded 9 January 2019, not from the budget session which began earlier this week.

Post-election drama

Footage of Rahul Gandhi using his phone as President Ram Nath Kovind addressed Parliament on 20 June went viral, with Twitter users criticising him for being disrespectful and slacking while on the job.

The fake tweet claiming Shah was napping in Parliament seems to be in retaliation to the flak Gandhi drew.

Both tweets come in the aftermath of an extremely competitive election campaign between the Congress and BJP, with both sides spreading fake news to discredit the other party. The Congress, though, received a drubbing, securing only 52 seats in the Lok Sabha elections.

In collaboration with SM HoaxSlayer.

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