False: BJP leader Anant Kumar Hegde said Shivaji statues will replace Kempegowda statues if the party wins Karnataka elections.

Context

Karnataka legislative assembly elections will be held in April or May 2023 to elect the new state government. In the run-up to the elections, on March 19, 2023, a Twitter user posted a screengrab of a Suvarna News 24x7 article and wrote: "Is Hegde totally crazy?" (translated from Kannada). The article image showed Anant Kumar Hegde, former Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and a member of parliament from the Bharatiya Janata Party. The article headline read, "If the BJP government comes to power, will the statue of Kempegowda be demolished and the statue of Shivaji? The viral…(sic) (translated)". The Facebook post was captioned, "If the BJP government comes to power, will the statue of Kempegowda be demolished and the statue of Shivaji? Minister's statement went viral. #Kannadanews #Anannthkumarhegde (translated)." 

However, this claim is false. A screenshot of a 2018 article, which was later taken down, has been shared again in the run up to the upcoming assembly elections in Karnataka.  

In Fact

Through a reverse image search, Logically found that the screengrab of the article has been circulating since 2018. Logically found that Suvarna News 24X7, a Kannada news channel, which rebranded as Asianet Suvarna News in December 2020, had indeed published the article with this headline in 2018, but the article was later taken down. One can see in the screengrab that the headline of this article was truncated by default when it was shared to Facebook, and so the article was taken out of context. Social media users took a screengrab of the Facebook post preview, and this image was circulated with false narratives ahead of the 2018 assembly elections as well. 

Logically accessed the archive version of the article, and found that the article was published on March 11, 2018. The full headline of the article stated: "If the BJP government comes to power, will the statue of Kempegowda be demolished and replaced with the statue of Shivaji? FB status of Minister's statement goes viral." It is to be noted that Kempegowda was a chieftain in the Vijayanagara empire in India, and was the founder of Bengaluru in the 16th century, as per a report by the Times of India. The Suvarna article described how a Facebook account named ‘Prajakiya’ alleged that Hegde made such a statement and how Hegde’s personal assistant Suresh Shetty had then registered a police complaint about the same. 

Further research showed that the Suvarna News article was written after a Facebook account named Prajakiya shared a status attributing a quote to Hedge. According to a report by the Times of India, the exact words of the post read, "If BJP comes to power in Karnataka, all statues of Kempegowda will be demolished and replaced with the statues of Shivaji" - Anant Kumar Hegde (sic)." The Times of India, Deccan Herald, and The Hindu had all reported that the claim was fake and no such statement had been made by Hegde.

When screenshots of this article resurfaced with similar claims in 2019, Hegde filed another complaint, this time naming Suvarna News 24X7 (Asianet Suvarna News) and a social media user Chandra Shekar Gowda as well. Hedge had taken to social media to share a copy of the police complaint which he had filed on March 19, 2019.

Hegde has issued a clarification in the past. On March 20, 2019, he wrote: "Last year, false messages were shared on Facebook with the headline "If BJP comes to power, we will pull down the statue of Kempegowda and install the statue of Shivaji - Ananthakumar Hegde” and have once again circulated on social media." He added, "I have never addressed Nada Prabhu Kempegowda in this way anywhere."

The Verdict

Hegde previously clarified that he has made no such statement. Hence, we are marking this claim as false.