A photo from 2018 of Congress leader Manish Chatrath at an opposition parties meet is being shared with a false claim that it shows Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy joining Congress.
The viral photo shows Chatrath standing with other opposition leaders including N. Chandrababu Naidu, H.D. Deve Gowda and Rahul Gandhi.
Last week, Basavaraj S Bommai, Chief Minster of Karnataka called Swamy a "freelance politician" for speaking out against his own party and its members.
The viral image highlights a man wearing a brown coat among a crowd of other politicians in a hall as Rahul Gandhi is seen addressing the press. The image was tweeted by Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga, Delhi BJP spokesperson with the text, "Congratulations @Swamy39 Ji for your officially Joining."
The tweet is archived here.
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Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse search and found the image on Getty Images uploaded on December 10, 2018. The image clicked by Arvind Yadav a photographer with Hindustan Times is captioned, "Opposition Leaders Meet Today, Chart Out Strategy For 2019 Lok Sabha Polls."
The image description details out the opposition leaders present at the meet including members of the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party, Loktantrik Janata Dal (LJD) on December 10, 2018 in New Delhi, India.
According to a report published on Hindustan Times on December 10, 2018, "Leaders from 21 parties come together and were present at the meet but the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP), two key players from politically important state of Uttar Pradesh skipped the meet."
We then contacted Pranav Jha, Communications in-charge for All India Congress Committee who identified the man in the photo as Congress leader Manish Chatrath.
Chatrath a former Chairman of Delhi Tourism and Transportation Development Corp is currently in-charge for the states of Arunachal and Meghalaya.
We them spoke with Manish Chatrath, who confirmed to us that it was him in the photo. "The person in the image, tweeted by Bagga is me and not Subramanian Swamy," Chatrath said.
BOOM also compared that image with another image of Manish Chatrath and found similarities.