Factcheck: Did the Kerala CPI (M) state secretary offer a party seat to Kejriwal in the coming assembly election?

Claim

A viral post on social media claimed that after the defeat of AAP in Delhi, CPI (M) state secretary and central politburo member M. V. Govindan offered the party’s fort Kannur constituency to Kejriwal in the coming assembly election.

The link to the post could be seen here.
In Kerala CPI (M) is in a direct electoral battle with Congress as the state nudges ahead for the state election to be held in 2026. In the wake of the AAP poll debacle in Delhi, both political parties engaged in mudslinging accusing their opponents of splitting the votes and thus facilitating BJP’s victory. Govindan has targeted Congress for the defeat of AAP and on multiple occasions had stated that Congress could have salvaged the INDIA alliance. The Congress also blamed the Left party for its ideological intransigence.
In the backdrop of these political developments, this message in social media was debated hotly.
Kannur in Northern Kerala is considered to be a fort for the communist party as both the incumbent chief minister and party secretary belong to the area.

Factcheck

To ascertain the truth DFRAC team first searched the official handles of the CPI (M) state unit and M. V. Govindan. The search found no result in this regard. Usually, the party posts the latest news to get connected with the cadres.

Then, the investigation found that the viral post had been shared with the tagline of T 21 media. After going through the website and social media handles of the online news organization, the team didn’t find any matching results.

Further, the probe found that a social media post template of T 21 media posted on January 13, 2025, was edited to create the viral post. The investigation proved that a Facebook Account named ‘We Hate CPIM’ first posted the viral message, after editing an earlier news template of T 21 online media.

Conclusion

From the analysis of the DFRAC, it became clear that a template of T 21 media posted on January 13 was edited to create the fake news claiming that the CPI (M) state secretary offered a seat to Kejriwal for the next assembly election. No such comment was made by the CPI (M) state secretary.

Analysis: fake news