CLAIM
A post showing Google CEO Sundar Pichai casting his vote for the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Tamil Nadu has been making rounds on social media .
The post was shared by a Twitter user with the caption, “Google CEO, @sundarpichai has casted his vote. #TNElection2019 #OruviralPuratchi”. It subsequently went viral, shared by a lot of Twitter users . The post has now been deleted after a lot of users called out the fake information the post carried.
The picture was also tweeted out by TV9 Gujarati, a Gujarati news channel.
True or False?
On doing a reverse image search, The Quint found that the picture with the viral post was a two-year old picture of Sundar Pichai from his visit to his alma mater, Indian Institute of Technology - Kharagpur (IITK) in West Bengal.
The picture in the viral post had been shared from his visit on his official Twitter handle on 7 January 2017.
It was found that even though the Google CEO was born in Tamil Nadu, he holds the citizenship of The United States of America, according to a Livemint article.
Since India doesn't permit foreign nationals to cast their vote in any Indian election, it is not possible for Sundar Pichai to cast his vote from Tamil Nadu in the 2019 Lok Sabha election .
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