Fact Check: Mohammad Zubair, Pratik Sinha were never nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

New Delhi, Oct 08: Were AltNews founders Mohammed Zubair and Pratik Sinha nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize? The answer is a categorical no and a news channel has exposed the biggest Nobel PR Con.

On Friday, Human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights group Center for Civil Liberties were declared the joint winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.

Before the announcement was made it was widely reported that Zubair and Sinha were among the list of prospective winners for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Times Now while exposing this claim said that the propaganda was peddled after Time magazine listed some of the shortlisted candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize 2022. The list included the names of Zubair and Sinha.

Times Now while debunking this claim revealed how this rumour about the two being shortlisted was nothing but a PR hoax. The channel wrote to the Norwegian Nobel Committee whether these names were shortlisted and the same had been categorically denied.

In an e-mail response to the channel, the committee emphasised that it does not provide the names of the nominees to the media and the contenders. The committee for the next 50 years will not reveal such nomination related date, the mail also read.

On the official website of the committee it says "neither the names of nominators nor of nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize may be divulged until 50 years have elapsed."

Times Now also pointed out how Time Magazine had cited three sources in its report on the nominees. The sources cited were a Reuters Survey which did not include the two names, bookmakers' odds which also did not cite the names and PRIO director's list.

The names of Zubair and Pratik appeared on the director of the Oslo Peace Research Institute's personal list. The director however has no say in who is nominated and who wins.Director Henrik Urdal only mentioned the two names as other worthy contestants in passing and their names were not even on the PRIO director's list of five recommendations.

"Journalists Pratik Sinha and Mohammed Zubair, co-founders of Indian fact-checking website AltNews, have relentlessly been battling misinformation in India, where the Hindu nationalist BJP party has been accused of frequently stoking discrimination against Muslims," the Time Magazine article had read.

OpIndia too had debunked this claim on October 6 and titled their story as How propaganda was crafted to promote an out-on-bail fact-checker while he did not even make it to the shortlist by Soros-funded NGO for Nobel Peace Prize.

Hence it can be concluded that Mohammad Zubair and Pratik Sinha were never contenders for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.