Post About Sudhir Chaudhary's Resignation is From an Impostor ANI Account

The claim comes days after Sudhir Chaudhary's spat with Union Minister Smriti Irani.

Fact-Check | The post was posted from a parody account of ANI.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A post which states that Sudhir Chaudhary, consulting editor of media organisation Aaj Tak, has resigned is being shared on social media platforms.

What have users said?: The post was shared with a caption that said, "Senior Editor Sudhir Chaudhary resigned from Aajtak. He said Kicked by same foot the one you have been licking for years is hurts my self respect : Sources."

The claim was shared by an account which had the username of the news agency Asian News International (ANI).

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

You can view archives of similar claims here, here, and here.

Why is the claim being shared?: In a recent interview, Chaudhary was seen interacting with Union Cabinet Minister Smriti Irani. While talking about the rising prices of tomatoes, Chaudhary asked Irani if the prices affected her household too?

• The minister responded by saying that he was trying to trivialise the issue. The anchor said, "This is called whataboutery..."

• Irani interrupted Chaudhary and said, "This is not whataboutery. Even I can ask, Sudhir ji, what happened when you were in jail."

• However, Irani later apologised for making personal remarks.

What is the truth?: The post was uploaded from an impostor account of Asian News International (ANI), which social media users later picked as a real incident. We did not find any information on Chaudhary resigning from Aaj Tak.

How did we find out?: While the post carried ANI's news flash image and its name, one closer look showed that the handle was called "@Hii_Nitish".

The post was not made from the official account of ANI.

(Source: Viral image/Screenshot/Altered by The Quint)

• We searched for the handle and came across the post uploaded on 21 August. The user was named 'Nitish Pathak'.

• Further, we looked for previous archives of the post and found that the account was formerly named as ANI.

The post had 95,000 views when it was archived.

(Source: Archive today/Screenshot)

ANI's real account: The media agency goes by the handle '@ANI' on X (formerly Twitter). While the agency joined the platform in August 2011, the parody account had joined a year before.

ANI has a gold tick next to its name.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

No information on Chaudhary resigning: A keyword search on Google did not show any report confirming the same. We did not find any official confirmation on Chaudhary's social media accounts as well.

• However, we found a post on his X account asking users to watch the replay of his show 'Black & White' in case they missed it.

• We have reached out to Aaj Tak for a comment on the claim and the copy shall we updated once we get a response from them.

Conclusion: It is clear that the claims about Sudhir Chaudhary resigning from Aaj Tak is false.

(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9643651818, or e-mail it to us at [e-mail] and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)