Is the new Governor of Maharashtra Sumitra Mahajan? Fact Check!

A Facebook user named ‘Rohit Chouhan Mitra Mandal’ shared a post on 3 June 2019. The post consists of Ex-Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan’s photograph. The post as translated from Hindi quoted “Hearty Congratulations and best wishes for the honourable sister Sumitra Mahajan ji as the Governor of Maharashtra.” As per this post’s claim, Sumitra Mahajan is appointed as the new Governor of Maharashtra. Let us see what the facts are!  

NARRATIVE ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

FacebookPost | ArchivedLink

FACT CHECK:

We started our research by searching on Google with ‘sumitra mahajan becomes governor of maharashtra’ key words. What we got in the search is below:

This search result gave us the news broadcast by ‘Deccan Chronicle’ on 5 June 2019. The news states that Sumitra Mahajan likely to become Maharashtra’s Governor.

DeccanChroniclePost | ArchivedLink

With this result, we got another news broadcast by ‘Patrika’. The news states that rumours of former Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan likely to be Maharashtra’s Governor started spreading fast on the social media on Tuesday. After this, BJP leaders started sharing congratulatory messages.

PatrikaPost | ArchivedLink

After this, we searched who is the current Governor of Maharashtra on Google. The search showed that, currently C. Vidyasagar Rao is the Governor of Maharashtra from 2014.

According to Indian Constitution, the President appoints the Governor of the state. The President’s office issues a notification. Therefore, we searched the website of the President’s Office.

The latest press release of the Governor’s appointment by the President’s Office was released on 21 August 2018.

PressRelease | ArchivedLink

When we entered the key words ‘Governor’ in the search box, the latest press release issued by the Presidential Office on the search of the governor is on 8 March 2019. This press release states that the President has approved the resignation of Mizoram Governor Kumamam Rajshekharan.

PIBPost | ArchivedLink

This information shows that at the time writing this article, Sumitra Mahajan appointed as the Governor of Maharashtra is just a rumour. The media had just expressed the possibility of appointing the post of the Governor by referring to the sources. Sumitra Mahajan is not appointed as the Governor of Maharashtra this article was written. When writing this article, we did not find any press release of appointing Sumitra Mahajan as the Governor of Maharashtra.

IN CONCLUSION:

Fact Crescendo has fact checked and confirms that the photograph is being share in the post with a wrong narrative. We categorise the story as FALSE.

FactCrescendo advises its readers to refrain from sharing such misleading and communally biased photographs and do a self-check on the true narrative of such incidents before believing them.