GST on Sunday Church Offerings in UP? Fake TOI Clipping Goes Viral

An image of a newspaper clipping reporting on UP govt’s decision to impose GST on church offerings has gone viral.

CLAIM

An image of what appears to be a newspaper clipping has been doing the rounds on social media.

The clipping, purportedly of an edition of The Times of India, claims that the Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government has introduced six percent GST on the offerings made in churches during the Sunday mass.

The post was shared by several individual Facebook users and pages, with one such iteration – posted by Stephan Masih – being shared almost 350 times. It was shared with the caption, “See this what BJP Govt did with Sunday church offering 6% GST [sic]”.

See this what BJP Govt did with Sunday church offering 6% GST .

Posted by Stephan Masih on Thursday, April 4, 2019

The same image, shared several times on Twitter, was also submitted by a WebQoof reader to check the veracity of the claim.

THE TRUTH

The newspaper clipping is photoshopped and the news, about the UP government introducing GST on church offerings, is fake.

A reverse image search of the viral image revealed another version of the photoshopped clipping – that showed the entire front page of the Times of India newspaper.

One way to determine that the news is fake is to compare the GST story’s font with the rest of the headlines seen on the page. Clearly, there is a discrepancy.

Another way to verify this is to trace the lead story on the front page: ‘Friends, kin behind 97% kidnaps’.

This particular story was published on 11 January 2010.

A look into the Times of India archive of that particular date confirmed that such story was not carried by the national daily on that day.

Two prominent headlines seen in the viral newspaper clipping are present in the archive. The fake GST story, however, is not.

In addition to this is the fact that GST was rolled out in 2017 while the paper clipping is from 2010 also proves that it is fake.

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