Fact Check: Dissecting the False Claim of MS Dhoni’s Alleged Endorsement for Congress in 2020 Image

What is the claim?

Mahendra Singh Dhoni is a cricket player and past captain of the men’s Indian cricket team. There is a picture of him going around on social media with the claim that he told people to vote for the Congress party in the Indian general elections that are currently going on.

Dhoni is holding up his left hand and right index finger in the picture. He is wearing the blue and yellow jersey of the Chennai Super Kings (CSK), a professional cricket team in the Indian Premier League (IPL). The picture was shared on X (formerly Twitter), and someone wrote, “Dhoni asking people of India to vote for Congress #Thala_for_a_reason #LokSabhaElections2024.” Similar posts from the past can be found here, here, and here.

The picture is also being shared on Facebook with the same claims. You can see older versions of these posts here, here, and here.

The hand is the symbol of the Congress party, but this picture of him putting up his left hand is being used incorrectly to say that he supports the grand old party. In the picture that went popular, Dhoni’s hand movements stand for CSK’s official account on X (which was then called Twitter) getting six million followers in 2020.

What did we find?

We found a YouTube movie uploaded on October 8, 2020, by MoneyControl, a news site that is part of the Network 18 media group, by searching for the picture backwards. The caption of the video was “IPL 2020 | Chennai Super Kings Get 6 Million Twitter Followers.” We can see the exact picture of MS Dhoni that is now going popular about ten seconds into the video. “To celebrate this accomplishment, the account posted a picture of team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni holding six fingers,” the text above this picture said. Dhoni has worked for CSK for more than ten years and was the captain of the team for the majority of that time.

Nandri filled Thala Dharisanam as our Twitter fam becomes 6 Million Strong! #SixerOnTwitter #WhistlePodu #Yellove 🦁💛 pic.twitter.com/GJc6vBYf39

— Chennai Super Kings (@ChennaiIPL) October 5, 2020

We also saw the same picture on October 5, 2020, on CSK’s main X account. The description said, “Nandri filled Thala Dharisanam as our Twitter family grows to 6 million!” You can find Sixer on Twitter at #WhistlePodu and #Yellove.

A video of different CSK players joining in the celebration was also shared on the account the same day. It said “Chennai Super #SixerOnTwitter!” in the description. Thanks a lot to all of my super friends for all the compliments and hate mail I’ve gotten over the last ten years. Many #yellows to you. The WhistlePodu.” The players in the video make the same hand movements and hold up six fingers for the cameras, just like Dhoni did in the shot that went viral.

In addition, we looked through CSK’s account’s history and found a picture from October 10, 2020. At that point, 6.6 million people were following the account. A record from seven days ago shows that the account had 5.99 million followers. This means that between October 3 and 10, it reached six million followers.

The cricket player has also never openly backed or campaigned for any political party.

The verdict

A picture of MS Dhoni celebrating Chennai Super Kings’ official account getting six million followers on X in 2020 has been shared with the false claim that he told people to vote for Congress in the 2024 Indian Lok Sabha elections that are still going on. That’s why we marked the claim as fake.