A screenshot of an NDTV video has gone viral claiming that President Ram Nath Kovind was not allowed to use the red carpet on the inauguration day of Narendra Modi stadium. An image of President Ram Nath Kovind and Home Minister Amit Shah from the inauguration day of Motera Stadium, Ahmedabad, on February 24, 2021, has gone viral on social media. In the image, Home Minister is walking on the red carpet, while one can see the President is walking on the bare ground. While different posts have captioned the image differently but all insinuating that President Ram Nath Kovind was not allowed to walk on the red carpet on which Amit Shah was walking because Kovind belongs to the SC/ST community.
A Twitter user, Ishrat Khan, shared the image with the caption in Hindi, which translates in English as, “The president of the country has left the red carpet for Modi and Amit Shah, and is walking on the floor. The country is blessed to have such a slave president.” Facebook user Rani Rajesh shared the image with a sarcastic caption in Hindi, which translates in English as, “Ahmedabad: Modi government honoured Sardar Patel by renaming the stadium on Modi’s name and the same day Home Minister Shah also gave full respect by walking on the red carpet and making President Kovind Ji walk out of the red carpet….. Only BJP can give this much respect.” This post is shared over 6,200 times at the time of reporting.
After re-watching the clip from it was found that at 04:46 minutes, President Kovind begins walking towards the red carpet, at 04:49 and 04:50 minutes, one can see him walking on the red carpet as he, along with Union Minister Amit Shah begin to take a turn. In another video, of this function on ‘Doordarshan’ YouTube channel, in which 15.15 minutes After that it can be clearly seen that President Kovind is walking on the red carpet. Furthermore, several instances of President Kovind walking on the red carpet were found in the said event. Although Amit Shah is not seen with him in this video, but it is wrong to say that President Kovind was not allowed to walk on the red carpet.
NDTV published on this video on February 24, 2021. At around 3:06 timestamp, one can see both Shah and Kovind entering the stadium, walking on the red carpet. The viral clip is of the stadium’s inauguration day when President Kovind and the Home Minister arrived for the Bhoomi pujan ceremony. The full video is of 1 hour 41 minutes of the inauguration day uploaded by DD News. In the full video, one can see various instances where President Kovind is seen walking on the red carpet.
Hence, a brief instance where the President is not on the red carpet has gone viral with the misleading claim of President Ram Nath Kovind not allowed to use the red carpet on the inauguration day of Motera stadium due to his SC/ST background.
