Following the declaration of the Lok Sabha election results on 4 June, a small clip of Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N Chandrababu Naidu speaking to news channel, NDTV, is being shared on social media platforms.
What does Naidu say?: He says, "We are secular. We had to join the BJP before due to political compulsions. Today, there is a democratic compulsion. CBI, ED, Income Tax, everybody is attacking. All institutions are demolished."
He, then, added "All leaders are better than Modi. The country needs consensus politics. It is a great nation, we have implemented cooperative federalism. You can go through history, only after elections, prime ministers are chosen."
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
(Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)
Is this true?: No, the claim is false as this interview of Naidu is old from February 2019.
Naidu spoke to NDTV in 2019 when he conducted a day-long fast to demand special status for Andhra Pradesh in New Delhi. He was joined by other opposition leaders too.
How did we find out?: We ran a relevant keyword search using words such as "All leaders are better than Modi Chandrababu Naidu" on Google and came across a video report by NDTV from 12 February 2019.
Naidu was speaking to senior journalist Sreenivasan Jain. Naidu's party had staged a day-long protest in New Delhi to demand special status for his state Andhra Pradesh.
Around 7:00 minutes of the interview, we can listen to the portion in the viral clip.
In 2019, the TDP chief was also joined by opposition leaders from the Trinamool Congress and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in the protest.
The Times of India reported on 11 February 2019 that Naidu had been trying to unite the opposition parties to take on the BJP for the 2019 general elections.
Following the victory of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), of which TDP is a major player in the recent Lok Sabha elections, Naidu held a press conference and stated, "We are in NDA. I am going for an NDA meeting. In the course of time, if there is anything we will report to you, reported the Deccan Herald on 5 June.
Hence, the viral claim that Naidu criticised caretaker Prime Minister and leader of the NDA, Narendra Modi, is false.
Conclusion: An old video of Chandrababu Naidu criticising Narendra Modi is being shared as a recent incident.
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