A number of posts shared repeatedly on WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook claim one of India’s richest man Azim Premji has donated INR 50,000 for the COVID-19 relief. The claim is false; he had donated this money a year ago as an endowment mostly for education.
By Abeen Shayiq
When journalists started tweeting about Azeem Premji’s donation of 50,000 crores to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, the news gained immense credibility and wide popularity. In response, not just the general public, writers, academics and politicians tweeted and re-tweeted about the donation on March 27, saying the chairman of Wipro Ltd has made this huge donation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a 2019 donation from Azeem Premji was passed off as a donation to ward off coronavirus pandemic.
The claim about Premji donating 50,000 crores is not true as the news is one year old and is being passed as current news. A number of articles on the internet confirm the same, including a CNBCTV18article, which is dated March 14, 2019. The article states that “Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd on Wednesday earmarked 34 per cent of his shares which is worth Rs 52,750 crore to an endowment under the Azim Premji Foundation, the company said in an exchange filing.”
He donated the money for charitable causes wholeheartedly, that include Wipro shares and other assets owned by him. Azim Premji was ranked as the second richest man in India in 2019 and was well known for his philanthropy. With this donation made in March 2019 brought the total value of his philanthropic donations to Rs 1,45,00 crores, making him arguably the biggest philanthropy in Indian history.
Azim Premji is indeed a very generous man and has done a large number of donations and charity in the past. But the news from 2019 is being passed off as current news. This has also been fact-checked by Alt News.
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