The latest outrage building up is how Gurmeet Ram Rahim, a spiritual leader cum entertainment personality, has been nominated for the Dronacharya Award given by the government of India. Here are few mainstream media outlets reporting about it:

This was followed by and a whole host of others have reported this “news”. This is now being given traction by the likes of Rana Ayyub and her ilk who are Tweeting these same articles and claiming as if it was some decision by a government body.

What is the truth though?

Since Indian media does not believe in fact-checking, I, as a reader have done:

As per the nomination process, there is a laundry list (pdf link) of organisations, which are autonomous and not government bodies, that can nominate a person for the Dronacharya Award, thus there is nothing “official” about if even if Gurmeet Ram Rahim is nominated for this. However, go beneath the surface and you will find how this news is even more absurd.

The Yoga Federation of India, which has nominated Gurmeet Ram Rahim, is NOT a recognised body, hence its nomination is not even valid. This is like Rana Ayyub nominating Burhan Wani for the Bharat Ratna; it has no meaning and is just clickbait.

Even assuming that this is a legit organisation recognised to nominate a person, the applications closed on Apr 28th, and again, makes the whole outrage pointless.

It took me all of 2 minutes to fact check this piece of “news”, which begs the question, why don’t journos working for mainstream organisations have this time to actually work instead of copy pasting and regurgitating articles that repeat ad-nauseum the same thing.