The Hindu editor claims ‘fake’ CBSE site as official GoI site, later deletes tweet

What is it with the post of being the editor at The Hindu. A few months back, The Hindu’s then editor Malini Parthasarthy spread pictures of Delhi floods from 2013 as if they were pictures of the Chennai floods which took place in December 2015:

Some media houses and their Editors are spreading 2.5 yr old Delhi Flood pics as #ChennaiFlood pics pic.twitter.com/kxksR13wsS

— OpIndia.com (@OpIndia_com) December 2, 2015

Now, recently appointed Editor of Mumbai edition of The Hindu, Sachin Kalbag has also done it. Today, Sachin Kalbag tweeted this out, which claimed that the official CBSE site had a badly written note to students:

This set off the usual chain reaction which meant attacks on the HRD ministry and the minister herself:

@SachinKalbag when the HRD minister spells that as ‘dat’, I’m not sure spelling and grammar are a priority for her underlings.

— Pierre Fitter (@pierrefitter) May 28, 2016

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@sachinkalbag Really did not expect Hitler to be brought up as a positive example to students.

— Ashwin Pande (@ashwinpande) May 28, 2016

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@SachinKalbag when HRD minister is not literate this is bound to happen

— Shaheed Karkare (@Sameer470) May 28, 2016

And when the editor of a “reputed” newspaper claims something, it is natural for political leaders to tag along. Congress leader Salman Soz was one of the people who shared this tweet:

So does the official, Government of India maintained, CBSE site contain a note for students which is badly spelt, has poor grammar, has references to Hitler and is in comic sans? Only if you consider a site which looks like this, littered with ads and pop-ups, to be a Government of India site:

The site in question, which had the note, was “cbse.results-nic.in” while the official Government of India site of CBSE is “cbseresults.nic.in”, which looks like this, complete with the CBSE logo:

Eventually after many “trolls” on social media pointed out that it was in fact not the official site, Kalbag backtracked, deleted the tweet and clarified:

The previous tweet on CBSE results is not the official site as some have pointed out. I was taken in by the NIC.in in the URL.

— Sachin Kalbag (@SachinKalbag) May 28, 2016

It is good to see someone apologise for a mistake, but now that this rumour has been set off on social media, one wonders whether it may come up as a full fledged news report tomorrow. In the mean time, a little bit of fact check shouldn’t hurt, unless one is just waiting for such moments.

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