The Supreme Court, under a constitution bench of five judges headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud is currently hearing the petitions to abrogate Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir where Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal is appearing on behalf of the petitioner National Conference leader Akbar Lone in this case. Meanwhile, a video of the court hearing is going viral on social media. Users who are sharing this video are claiming that Kapil Sibal has made an argument with the reference of Brexit like referendum. However, the Supreme Court has stated that a referendum is not possible in Kashmir, and the opinions of the established institutions should also be taken into account.
Ashok Shrivastav, anchor and editor of DD News shared this video on Twitter and wrote: ”Amidst the news of #NoConfidenceMotion a dangerous news was left out of the eyes of the people. Congressman Kapil Sibal has demanded a plebiscite in the Supreme Court #Kashmir . Pakistan does the same thing. These are the leaders of INDIA, who are lobbying for Pakistan in the Supreme Court of India”.
This tweet by Ashok Shrivastav has received more than 9,000 retweets and around 14,000 likes, while it has been viewed by more than 100,000 people.
Moreover, other users are also claiming Senior advocate Kapil Sibal as ‘Congressman’ in the Supreme Court.
On the other hand, some social media users have shared this video claiming that Kapil Sibal is a Rajya Sabha member from the Samajwadi Party.
Fact-Check
To verify the claims made in the above viral video, the Dfrac team searched about Kapil Sibal as a ‘Congressman’ on Google. We found several media reports during this process.
Website, ‘The Hindu’ published news on May 25, 2022 with the headline: “Kapil Sibal quits Congress, to fight Rajya Sabha polls with SP support”.
In addition to that, Times of India also published news on May 26, 2023, claiming that senior leader Kapil Sibal had resigned from the Congress party, delivering a major blow to the party. He submitted his resignation on Wednesday and filed his nomination as an independent candidate from Uttar Pradesh for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections. He is receiving support from the Samajwadi Party (SP) led by Akhilesh Yadav.
On the other hand, the Dfrac team also visited the official website of Rajya Sabha and gathered some information about Kapil Sibal claiming that his name is given as ‘Independent and others’. No such media report has been found in the recent past, in which it has been told that Kapil Sibal has joined ‘Congress party’ again.
Conclusion
Dfrac’s Fact-Check has proved that the claim of anchor and editor Ashok Shrivastav and other social media users claiming Kapil Sibal a ‘Congressman’ or leader of Samajwadi Party is misleading, since he is serving as an Independent member of Rajya Sabha at present.
