Claim: PML-Q MNA Monis Elahi has joined Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf
Fact: Monis Elahi has officially rejected any claims regarding him joining PTI and he has also published a tweet rejecting the viral image of a notification claiming the same.
On 19 August 2022, several twitter users shared an image which claimed to be a notification signed by PTI Secretary General Asad Umar and announced that the PMLQ MNA Monis Elahi has decided to join PTI and will be fighting the next election from NA-80 on the PTI ticket.
Some Twitter users also shared screenshots of news bulletins from mainstream news organizations like SAMAA, which claimed that Monis Elahi has officially joined PTI.
A lot of users flagged this to be false so Soch Fact Check decided to verify this information.
Fact or Fiction?
Only a few hours after the tweets claiming that Monis Elahi has joined PTI went viral, the MNA posted a tweet from his official Twitter account which is verified and has 439,500 followers, with the username @MoonisElahi6. In this tweet he clarified that although he has a lot of respect for the PTI and appreciates his work experience with Asad Umar and believes Imran Khan to be his prime minister, this notification is fake.
https://twitter.com/MoonisElahi6/status/1560577216630620160
Soch Fact Check also confirmed with Monis Elahi’s office, where they confirmed that he has issued a clarification on his Twitter and that the information circulating on social media is fake.
Virality
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for 19 August 2022 using the following search terms:
- “Monis” “Elahi” “PTI”
- “مونس الہی“ “تحریک انصاف”
For these search terms we found several tweets being shared with hundreds of followers claiming that Monis Elahi has joined PTI. In just 24 hours these tweets were shared with more than 209,212 Twitter users and received more than 16,851 interactions. Some of them can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Conclusion: A viral notification claimed that PMLQ MNA Monis Elahi has joined Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf. But the MNA clarified that the notification is fake. Mainstream news channels such as SAMAA also shared the contents of this notification. Even after the politician’s clarification, several Twitter users continue to share the same. Soch Fact Check concludes that this is false and that Monis Elahi is not joining PTI.