Is Narendra Modi the strong contender for Nobel Peace Prize?

Several news outlets falsely claim that PM Modi is a strong contender for the prize.

Claim

“PM Modi biggest contender for Nobel Peace Prize” says Asle Toje, Deputy leader of the Nobel Prize Committee. Calls himself a “big Modi fan” and says Modi is the “most credible face of peace in the world today.”

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Explanation

Nobel Prize Committee’s Deputy leader Asle Toje is in India right now and there have been several news outlets reporting that he had opined that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the strong contender for Nobel Peace Prize. News outlets such as CNBC TV18, Mint, Economic Times, Times Now, etc have reported so. This was followed up by right-wing outlets such as OpIndia, Megh Updates, Postcard along with journalist Rahul Shivshankar making the claim.

Asle Toje, the deputy leader of the Nobel Committee.

What’s the truth?

According to the rules of the Nobel Prize website, “Neither the names of nominators nor of nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize may be divulged until 50 years have elapsed.” So, it is not in practise for a Nobel Prize Committee member to reveal about any nominations. In the same page, this information had been mentioned at 4 different places including a separate heading “50 year secrecy rule”.

Screengrab from the Nobel Prize website.

We further searched for any information if Asle Toje, the deputy leader of the Nobel Prize Committee, had made any such statements. But there is no evidence to suggest that he had made any such statements in any of his interviews. Some journalists too were asking for more proof for such claims, as there weren’t any.

Various noted journalists such as Rana Ayyub, Mohammed Zubair and the like have been sharing a video of Asle Toje supposedly denying it as fake news in an interview to ANI.

In the video, he said “I am the deputy leader of the Nobel Committee. A fake news tweet was sent out and I think we should treat it as a fake news. It’s fake. Let’s not discuss it. Let’s not give it energy or oxygen. I categorically deny that I said anything resembling what was in that tweet.” However, the 30-second video doesn’t reveal what the question was put forth to him.

Since this video featured ANI logo, we searched for their article and YouTube page. Interestingly, in the article published in ANI website about Asle Toje’s interview, this portion of Asle Toje’s response has not been covered. It had only covered Asle Toje’s praise for India’s growth and Narendra Modi’s stature in the world stage.

Congress MP Jairam Ramesh had also tweeted the video of Asle Toje supposedly denying the claims of Narendra Modi is the strong contender for Nobel Peace Prize as fake.

Earlier, several news outlets have misquoted White House spokesperson & National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby’s statements by reporting that he had said that only Modi can convince Russia to stop war in Ukraine.

Read More: Did US say PM Modi can convince Russia to stop the war in Ukraine?

Conclusion

In our search, we found that the news reports made in several news outlets to be fake as there is no evidence to suggest that the deputy leader of Nobel Committee Asle Toje said that PM Modi is the strongest contender for the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Ramasamy Jayaprakash

Ramasamy works as a Senior Sub-Editor at YouTurn and writes articles in Tamil and English. He also makes videos for YouTurn's Tamil & English YouTube channels.
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