New Delhi: The Congress has been caught spreading fake news again. The party had tweeted on Saturday that over 100 filmmakers have come together to appeal to the people of the country to vote the BJP out of power. However, one of the filmmakers, whose name has been mentioned in the petition, has denied to have ever signed the petition. 

Gujarati filmmaker, actress, writer and radio jockey Aarti Vyas Patel's name was the second name mentioned in the petition, but in a massive takedown of the Congress's falsehood, she took to Twitter to declare that she had neither given any statement, nor signed any petition, appealing to the people to vote against the BJP. 

The Congress had jumped to derive mileage out of the spurious 'Save Democracy' campaign by Artist United India, and tweeted that communities across were standing up against what it called the BJP government's misuse of power, hate politics and polarisation. 

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The campaign was launched a few days back by Vetri Maaran, Anand Patwardhan, Sanalkumar Sasidharan, Sudevan, Deepa Dhanraj, Gurvinder Singh, Pushpendra Singh, Kabir Singh Chowdhry and others. 

The petition stated that the country was going through "the most testing times ever". It said, "Fascism threatens to strike us hard with all its might if we don't choose wisely in the coming Lok Sabha election. Period."

The petition said that things turned for the worse once the BJP came to power in 2014. "A country polarised along religious lines isn't the India we have known. Besides, the BJP and its allies have failed miserably in keeping their election promises. They are now using mob lynching and cow vigilantism to split the country communally. Marginalising Dalits and Muslims is the name of the game," it said. 

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It continued, "Any individual or institution that raises the slightest dissent is labelled ‘anti-national’. ‘Patriotism’ is how they grow their vote bank. Let us not forget that some of our eminent writers and media persons lost their lives because they dared to dissent.

"Romanticising and exploiting the armed forces is one of their strategies. Even at the risk of engaging the nation in an unnecessary war." 

The petition, among other things, alleged that the Modi government had turned a blind eye to the farmers, while making the country "the boardroom property of a handful of businessmen".   

"We urge all of you to do everything in your capacity to keep this harmful regime from coming back to power," it said. 

However, what the people behind this campaign also did was to put words in the mouth of a filmmaker and make a party to their nefarious design, evidently, against her wish.