No, India Was Not Excluded From Joe Biden’s Inauguration Ceremony

A claim viral on the internet states that while India’s neighbouring countries received an invitation for the inauguration ceremony of the 46th President of the United States Joe Biden, India did not.

However, we found that the claim was false and Ambassador of India to the United States, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, did attend the ceremony that took place on 20 January.

CLAIM

The claim that is viral reads in Hindi, “USA में बाइडेन की शपथ ग्रहण मे भारत के सभी पड़ौसी देशों को निमंत्रण मिला! लेकिन भारत को नहीं मिला ऐसा क्यों हुआ..??”

[Translation: All the neighbouring countries of India were invited for Biden's swearing-in USA! But India did not get an invitation, why did this happen?]

An archive of the post can be found here.

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An archive of the post can be found here.

An archive of the post can be found here.

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The same claim was also shared by many people on Twitter.

An archive of the post can be found here.

An archive of the post can be found here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We conducted a Google search for President Biden’s inauguration ceremony and found a link to the Joint Committee on Inaugural Ceremony’s (JCCIC) website that contained special guidelines in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The website mentioned that the pandemic had forced them to limit the in-person attendance and made an appeal for people to witness the Inauguration Day from their home.

We then came across a tweet posted by the Indian ambassador to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu where he retweeted a post by the official Twitter account of the Embassy of India in the US.

The tweet contained three images of Sandhu in front of the capitol building and it said, “Ambassador @SandhuTaranjitS at the Capitol to attend 59th Presidential Inauguration - Oath of Office Ceremony of US President-elect Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.”

Ambassador @SandhuTaranjitS at the Capitol to attend 59th Presidential Inauguration - Oath of Office Ceremony of US President-elect Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. & Vice President-elect Kamala Harris pic.twitter.com/8eRZ4IB71q

— India in USA (@IndianEmbassyUS) January 20, 2021

We searched for details on invitees and found a news report that said that foreign leaders are traditionally not invited on this occasion.

Apart from India, several other foreign missions were invited for the ceremony that included Russia, China, Ireland, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Another claim related to the inauguration ceremony went viral in November 2020 when people said that India’s former prime minister Manmohan Singh had been invited as the ‘chief guest’ for the ceremony. The Quint’s WebQoof team had debunked the claim.

Evidently, the claim that India was snubbed from President Biden’s inauguration ceremony is false.

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