Fact Check: Article on Chandrababu as kingmaker was published in The New York Times but not on the front page
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has won a third time in a much tighter Lok Sabha elections than expected. BJP fell short of the majority with just below the required 272 seats. However, its coalition partners gained the additional seats leading to the NDA alliance forming the government very soon.
Claim :
An article on the importance of Chandrababu Naidu in the formation of a coalition government at the Centre was published on the front page of The New York TimesFact :
The article was not published on the front page of The New York Times, it was published under the Asia tab of the website
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has won a third time in a much tighter Lok Sabha elections than expected. BJP fell short of the majority with just below the required 272 seats. However, its coalition partners gained the additional seats leading to the NDA alliance forming the government very soon. Alliance partners and two veteran politicians, chiefs of the Telugu Desam Party and Janata Dal-United, are going to assume the role of kingmakers in this political scenario.
The national and international media outlets are talking about these two kingmakers. An article was published in The New York Times about Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar as kingmakers, with the title ‘The New Kingmakers Who Could Make or Break Modi’s Government’.
Amidst this, some social media users are sharing screenshots of this article with the claim that the article was published on the front page of The New York Times edition on June 5, 2024. The caption shared along with the image is ‘*The New York Times* front page..’
Fact Check:
The claim is Misleading. The article on Chandrababu Naidu was published in the New York Times but not on the front page.
When searched the New York Times website, we did not find the article published on the front page of the newspaper. There are separate front pages for New York, National (United States), and International (rest of the world), on all these three we could not see any article about Chandrababu Naidu.
Upon further search, we found that the article on the kingmakers of Indian politics, Chandrababu Naidu, Telugu Desam Party chief, and Nitish Kumar, Janata Dal-United, was published in the internal pages of the news website. The article was published under the ‘Asia’ tab in ‘World’. The article states that in the first two terms, Prime Minister Modi easily set his own terms with his party winning the majority of the seats. But this term, he has reached an agreement to form a coalition government that includes two regional parties – Telugu Desam Party and Janata Dal-United.
The article goes on to explain how Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar are known to be pragmatic and deal-making politicians whose priorities will be practical concessions for their respective states.
Therefore, it is true that the article titled ‘The New Kingmakers Who Could Make or Break Modi’s Government’ addressing the importance of the TD and JDU in the government formation in India was published on June 5, 2024. It is not true that the article was published on the front page. The claim is misleading.
