Report claims Fact-Checkers M Zubair and P Sinha as potential Nobel Peace laureates.

The latest Time report suggests that fact-checkers Pratik Sinha and Mohammed Zubair are among the favourites to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.

Time reports that Mr. Sinha and Mr. Zubair, co-founders of the fact-checking website AltNews, are among the favourites to win the award based on nominations that were made public by Norwegian MPs, predictions from bookmakers, and selections from the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).

Mr. Zubair was detained in June of this year for a 2018 tweet that was found ‘extremely offensive and more than sufficient to provoke feelings of hatred’ (FIR) by the Delhi police. He was accused by the Delhi Police of inciting animosity between various groups based on religion and performing intentional acts to inflame religious feelings.

Global outrage over the fact-arrest checker’s prompted the American non-profit Committee To Protect Journalists to issue a statement calling it ‘another low for press freedom in India, where the government has created a hostile and unsafe environment for members of the press reporting on sectarian issues.’

A month later, Mr. Zubair left Tihar Jail when the Supreme Court granted him release.

There are around 343 contenders for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, including 251 individuals and 92 organisations.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a politician from Belarus who opposes the government, broadcaster David Attenborough, climate activist Greta Thunberg, Pope Francis, Simon Kofe, the foreign minister of Tuvalu, and Myanmar’s National Unity government are among those named by Norwegian lawmakers as nominees, claims Reuters survey.

The regulations of the Nobel Committee on nominations for the peace prize state that ‘Neither the names of nominators nor of nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize may be released until the beginning of the year marking the 50th anniversary of the awarding of a particular prize.’

Along with Mr. Sinha and Mr. Zubair, other contenders for the peace award include Alexey Navalny, a Russian dissident and opponent of Vladimir Putin, Volofomyr Zelenski, the UN Refugee Agency, the World Health Organization (WHO), and Mr. Sinha.