Yesterday, Aam Aadmi Party’s Arvind Jha Tweeted a July 2017 article from NDTV titled “Thailand Approves $5.5 Billion Bullet Train Project With China” casting aspersions on the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train, the cost of which is pegged at about $17 billion.
https://twitter.com/jalajboy/status/914533926294528001?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The same was promptly retweeted by Delhi Chief Minister and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal. Kejriwal, who in the past posted fake news on EVM tampering and demonetization drive and re-tweeted unsubstantiated stories of “IB report” on Punjab elections, is a champion in spreading rumours. Kejriwal had been against the bullet train project, and once he claimed, using some weird calculations, that a ticket of bullet train will cost 75,000 rupees.
Meanwhile, others piggybacked on the same and chimed in with their comments.
https://twitter.com/pbhushan1/status/914731508149116929?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/JarnailSinghAAP/status/914583704500019200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
But let us take you to where it all started. Hate monger, anti-Modi disgraced cop Sanjiv Bhatt, had tweeted this on 27th September,
https://twitter.com/sanjivbhatt/status/912918031952728064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Here, Bhatt, speaks of the 300 km stretch, which AAP leader Arvind Jha took up as 3,000 km and Prashant Bhushan, who has in the past tweeted fake news and images of BHU protests, also copied and pasted the message.
This makes it look like Bhatt’s ‘joke’ went on WhatsApp, which got edited by some mischief monger and got circulated on Twitter again, by the man who handles Aam Aadmi Party’s social media and communication, Arvind Jha.
The Tweet of Jha was then picked up by Congress leader Sanjay Jha, who added his own mathematics to it.
https://twitter.com/JhaSanjay/status/914744124292632576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
None of them bothered to check the facts. As per this report, the construction of the said bullet train link between Bangkok to the northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima, a distance of more than 250km, will start later this year and is scheduled for completion in 2021. The same will run at a speed of 250 km/hour and estimated cost for the same comes to about $5.1 billion dollars.
On the other hand, Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train will run at a speed of 320 km/hour and total cost of building the 508 km network is estimated at $17 billion.
These are the glaring discrepancies which these people deliberately chose to ignore. Makes you wonder which WhatsApp group was activated to spread misinformation. Or perhaps that’s a sign the elections are up in BJP ruled Gujarat.
https://twitter.com/sachya2002/status/914675093082480641?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Finally, some sense and shame prevailed and at least one of the rumor mongers, Prashant Bhushan apologised for spreading lies and propaganda, but he did not delete his original tweet containing the lie:
https://twitter.com/pbhushan1/status/914754922209349632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw