An image of Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray paying tribute to former prime minister Indira Gandhi on her death anniversary is viral with a false claim on social media.
The photograph shows Thackeray, Shiv Sena chief, offering his tribute to a photo of Gandhi kept on a wooden easel in front of an oil painting of Chhatrapati Shivaji. A section of netizens has claimed that Thackeray disrespected the Maratha chief as the image appears to show Gandhi's photo resting on the oil painting.
The image has been captioned on Facebook as, "A wooden plank on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj to accomodate his new Matoshri."
Click here to see the Facebook post.
The image was also tweeted with the same claim.
The tweet is archived here.
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Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search on the photograph and found that the same photo was tweeted by Uddhav Thackeray's office on October 31, 2021, on the death anniversary of Indira Gandhi. We then checked Live videos from the event and was able to ascertain that the wooden stand on which Gandhi's photo was kept, was at a distance from the oil painting of Chhatrapati Shivaji and was not resting on the latter.
The event was broadcast by DD SahyadariNews on October 31, 2021. Between the time stamp 0:28 to 0:35 visuals of Thackeray paying homage to Indira Gandhi can be seen.
At 35 seconds it is clear that the wooden easel did not touch the oil painting and was made as a temporary arrangement. Thackeray also paid tribute to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who born on October 31, 1875. The same viral image was fact checked by India Today earlier.