IANS claims Namita Gokhale signed petition against ‘anti-nationals’, but she denies

Wire agency IANS is under the scanner once again for publishing false news. On April 28, the agency put out a story claiming that “several creative artistes from different fields on Sunday issued a statement urging people to vote against ‘anti-nationals’ in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.” According to the story, the list of these “creative artistes” include actors Akshay Kumar, Vivek Oberoi, Sunny Deol and Rahul Roy, writers Vikram Sampath, Ashok Chakradhar and Namita Gokhale, dancer Sonal Mansingh and singer Daler Mehndi.

However, Namita Gokhale took to Twitter today and denied signing any such petition. “Would not have signed such a statement in a million years. Business Standard and IANS should do basic fact checking before putting out fake information,” she tweeted.

This comes a month after IANS edited a copy on Rahul Gandhi’s speech in March this year to kill all accusatory references to industrialist Anil Ambani, who owns a majority stake in the news agency.

Update: Both IANS and BS have pulled down this story.