A graphic purportedly featuring Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has gone viral on social media. The graphic surfaced after Sitharaman presented the Union Budget 2026-2027 in the Lok Sabha on February 1, 2026. The text in the viral graphic attributes a statement to the Finance Minister, claiming that she said, “There are no poor people in our country. People pretend to be poor and people are buying a lot of gold and silver.”
The above post can be seen here. (Archive)
NM VERIFIED
NewsMobile verified the claim and found it to be misleading.
The NM team initiated its verification by running a keyword search to find relevant media reports carrying the viral statement attributed to the Union Finance Minister. However, no credible media organisation, government release, or official source reported such a statement. The complete absence of this remark across mainstream media strongly suggests manipulation, as a statement of this nature by the Finance Minister during the Budget session would have attracted coverage.
Moving forward, the team closely analysed the viral graphic and observed a watermark reading “Molitics” in the upper corner. To verify this further, the viral graphic was run through a reverse image search. This led us to a similar graphic uploaded on the official Instagram handle of Molitics dated January 30, 2026.
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The original Molitics graphic uses the same image of Nirmala Sitharaman but carries an entirely different statement. In the original version, the quote translates to 56.2 crore people above the age of 15 are employed in India. The accompanying caption further states that according to a survey, 562 million people aged above 15 are employed, GDP growth is projected to be between 6.5 and 7 percent.
The original graphic makes no mention of poverty, people pretending to be poor, or gold and silver purchases.
A comparison image can be seen below:
Hence, it is evident that Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman did not make the statement claimed in the viral graphic. The graphic circulating on social media is digitally manipulated.
