DigitEye India Fact Checkers
After the successful soft-landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the south pole of the Moon, multiple videos concerning ISRO chief S Somanath started circulating on social media. Earlier an old video of the ISRO chief celebrating went viral claiming that he was celebrating the landing. This time another video of him being felicitated is doing rounds.
The 0:09 minutes long video shows two men clad in white felicitating S Somanath. The men drape a shawl over his shoulders while he folds his hands in a ‘Namaste’ and thanks them. Multiple videos on social media claim that the ISRO chief visited the RSS office in Bengaluru and this video is from that event.
ISRO Chief Somnath in RSS Kaaryaalay in Bangalore🔥 deal with it liberals pic.twitter.com/4x80Yfcb7j
— Viक़as (@VlKAS_PR0NAM0) August 25, 2023
It has also been shared here, here, and here.
Digiteye India received a WhatsApp request to fact check this viral video.
FACT CHECK
The Digiteye India team broke down the video into keyframes and ran a reverse image search on Google. We saw multiple people have shared this video with a similar claim. On searching further with keywords, we found this tweet by Rajesh Padmar – RSS head of promotion and publicity. His tweet included three pictures and the same viral video.
In his tweet dated July 19, 2023, S Somanath was congratulated by the general secretary of RSS – Dattatreya Hosabale – for successfully leading the Chandrayaan-3 mission. It mentioned that the felicitation took place at Rashtrotthana Parishat, Chamarajapete, Bengaluru, much before the landing of Chandrayaan-3 rover on the moon. The rover landed on the moon on August 23, 2023.
RSS Sarakaryavah Dattatreya Hosabale congratulated Dr S Somanath, Chairman of ISRO on successfully leading of #Chandrayan3, at Rashtrotthana Parishat, Chamarajapete, Bengaluru. pic.twitter.com/yk3iTMoiB4
— Rajesh Padmar (@rajeshpadmar) July 19, 2023
We ran a Google search on Rashtrotthana Parishat. The results showed that it is an NGO that “has been working towards creating a healthy and sustainable society since 1965 by bringing about transformation of the society through Individual.” We looked at the social media handles of Rashtrotthana Parishat to verify the date of the video. In one of their blog posts, they have written about this event and have shared the same pictures.
The blog post mentions that the event was organized “to celebrate his achievements in space exploration and to express its support for ISRO’s future missions.”
We looked further to verify the video using multiple keywords and came across this tweet by Vishwa Samvada Kendra, Karnataka. The tweet mentioned that the ISRO chief did not visit the RSS office as claimed by the video.
Clarification:
The news (Video) circulating in Social media saying ISRO chief Sri Somnath visited RSS office is not a fact.
He has not visited RSS office. This is an old video clip when he met people who are heading the TAPAS project. TAPAS is an initiative where BPL students…— VSK Karnataka (@VSKKarnataka) August 26, 2023
Rather, he had visited the Rashtrotthana Parishat to meet people leading the ‘TAPAS’ project. The project by the NGO aims to enable male students from the underprivileged sections of society to study at IIT. Hence, a wrong claim.
CLAIM: ISRO Chief, S Somanath visited the RSS office in Bengaluru after the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3.
CONCLUSION: The video is from July 2023 when S Somanath visited an NGO in Bengaluru and was felicitated for leading the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
RATING: Misrepresentation — 
