On May 25, 2024, a claim began circulating on social media and messaging platforms that Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal resigned from his ministry and walked out of Parliament while declaring the government a traitor. However, the minister has neither left the PML-N nor his ministry.
Ahsan Iqbal resigns from planning ministry and declares government a traitor
The iVerify Pakistan team has checked this content and has established that it is false.
To arrive at this verdict, the IVerify Pakistan team contacted Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal’s public relations officer.
On May 25, 2024, a claim began circulating across social media platforms that Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal abdicated his position and declared the government to be a traitor.
On X, a user, who appears to be a PTI supporter based on their past posts, posted a video of the PML-N secretary general shouting and protesting in the National Assembly.
The caption said, “Ahsan Iqbal resigned from his ministry and walked out of Parliament calling the government that had taken the country back to the IMF (International Monetary Fund) a traitor”.
The post got 288,000 views.
The same claim was shared here, here and here.
The claim was also doing the rounds on WhatsApp groups and forwarded many times. WhatsApp defines messages forwarded many times as those that are shared “through a chain of five or more chats”.
The WhatsApp message had the same content as the claim being shared on social media platform X.
The iVerify Pakistan team sought to determine the veracity of the claim due to the video’s virality as well as the nature of the allegation about a senior PML-N leader and government minister’s sudden estrangement from his party.
The team reached out to Iqbal’s public relations officer Nihal Farid for corroboration about the claims to which she said: “This is fake.”
Further, it can be seen from the video that it is from the tenure of the PTI-led government since it features former National Assembly deputy speaker Qasim Suri presiding over the session while seated on the speaker’s chair.
His presence shows the footage is not recent. Additionally, the audio in the footage is clearly tampered with since the word “army chief” is overlaid over what Iqbal is actually saying at the two-second and the eight-second marks in the same cadence and tone in stark contrast to his otherwise heated tone in the video.
Lastly, the team checked his X profile for any evidence of disgruntlement with the party or similar announcement of leaving it but found none with him still resharing posts from the official account of his planning ministry or PML-N-related posts.
He also participated in the PML-N’s May 28 general council meeting that saw Nawaz Sharif elected as the party president again.
The iVerify Pakistan team has determined that the claim regarding the planning minister is false.
Iqbal is not only still the planning minister but also still with the PML-N while the video circulating of him is also old.
