A purported screenshot of The Times of India's business section, Times Business, is being shared on social media.
The page carries news on the 5G spectrum auction, noting that the "5G auctions suffer a record loss of Rs 2.8 lakh Cr (sic.)" and shows the figure "2800000000000000" on the top of the page.
However, the screenshot is morphed. The original digital version of the newspaper only carries news regarding the auction and neither discusses "record losses," nor does it show a numerical figure on its front page.
CLAIM
The purported screenshot of the page from the Business section of The Times of India was shared, claiming that the auction saw massive losses amounting to Rs 2.8 lakh crore.
The screenshot was shared by Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee's Social Media Vice Chairperson Pankhuri Pathak, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) MLA TRB Rajaa, Bharatiya Tribal Party (BTP) MLA Chhotubhai Vasava, and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Andhra Pradesh's verified Facebook page.
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An archive of this tweet can be seen here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We saw that the article carried 'Pankaj Doval's' byline.
We looked for Pankaj Doval on social media platforms and found a verified Twitter account by the same name, that identified him as Times of India's national editor. Here, we came across a tweet that carried a photo of the same front page.
We saw that the story discussed the end of the 5G spectrum auctions on Monday, 1 August, which "fetched a record Rs 1.5 lakh crore for the exchequer," as the government prepared to launch the telecom services from October later this year.
It mentioned that Jio, owned by Mukesh Ambani, was the biggest buyer, spending Rs 88,708 crores. This was followed by Airtel, which spent Rs 43,084 crores to secure its share of the spectrum.
The morphed version of the screenshot appears to add extra space in the photo to accommodate the numerical figure, and it used a changed font of another headline next to the lead story.
While the original version of the paper carries a headline mentioned 5G to be the "dawn of a new era" in India's telecommunications business, the altered version displays a headline on 5G offering "economic and social benefits."
A notable discrepancy in the altered version of the news clipping is that the number in the headline contains 14 zeroes, which is 2,800 lakh crores, while the text mentions '2.8 lakh crores'.
Evidently, the viral clipping that the government suffered "record losses" of Rs 2.8 lakh crores during the 5G spectrum auction is an edited one.
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