That’s a Pre-Pandemic Photo of Kejriwal Giving Masks to Children

The image is from November 2019 when Kejriwal along with Manish Sisodia distributed masks to school children.

The image is from November 2019 when Kejriwal along with Manish Sisodia distribute masks to school children.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/Altered by The Quint)

An old image of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal distributing masks to school children is being shared on Twitter and Facebook to claim that he was making the kids wear a mask while he himself wasn't wearing one.

CLAIM

The claim was shared on Twitter by the former mayor of Nagpur Municipal Corporation – Sandip Joshi. He wrote, “तीन बगैर मास्क के विद्वान बच्चे को मास्क लगना सिखा रहे हैं.”

[Translation: Three smart men, all without a mask, are teaching a kid how to wear one]

An archived version of the tweet can be seen here.(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

The same was shared by a few other users on Twitter and Facebook. (An archive version of can be viewed here, here, here and here.)

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

On conducting a reverse image search we came across a PTI news report on The Print published in November 2019 which carried this image. The article mentioned that Kejriwal along with Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister Manish Sisodia distributed masks to school children in New Delhi.

This was reportedly a part of government’s initiative to protect children from pollution and tell them about stubble burning.

(Source: The Print/Screenshot)

The image in the article was attributed to news agency PTI and on looking through the old archives, we found this picture from 1 November 2019.

(Photo: PTI/Altered by The Quint)

Kejriwal had himself tweeted about the initiative and wrote that the Delhi government distributed “50 lakh masks” through private and government schools on that particular day.

(Source: Twitter/Arvind Kejriwal)

Further, the first reported case of COVID-19 in India was on 27 January 2020 when a student had returned to Kerala from Wuhan City, China.

Clearly, an old image from 2019, way before the pandemic hit our shores, is being shared with a false claim that Kejriwal was distributing masks to school children without wearing one.

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