A photograph of four men standing on each other's shoulders purportedly showing they are tying a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) flag atop an electric pole has been shared on social media with a claim that the picture is a proof of BJP's presence in the southern state Tamil Nadu.
BOOM found that the photo is morphed. The BJP flag photo was digitally placed over a different flag picture to make the viral image.
Several BJP leaders such as BJP national general secretary C.T. Ravi, Himachal BJP spokesperson Prajwal Busta posted the photo with a caption saying, "Lotus is blooming in Tamil Nadu".
Click here to view the post.
Click here to view the post.
We also found some posts claiming it was an RJD flag with RJD leaders Prem Shankar Yadav and Prahlad Yadav sharing another morphed photo.
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Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search and found the original photo was uploaded on a YouTube channel on December 31, 2019.
The video can be seen below
It can be noticed that the flag colour is blue in the picture. We further ran a search and found that the photo was uploaded on a Facebook page called Buddhamay Bharat on April 26, 2019 with the location tagged as Shahpur Kutub. Shahpur Kutub is a village in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh.
Click here to view the post.
We then found a fact check by Vishwas News who spoke to a Rohitash Kumar from Shahpur, Uttar Pradesh who confirmed to them that he had clicked the picture and it was a BSP flag atop the electricity pole.
A search on Facebook for the location - Shahpur Kutub led us to its geolocation page where we found the same Rohitash Kumar tagged in one of the photos. We contacted Kumar who confirmed to us that photo is of a BSP flag and that he had clicked the picture in Shahpur, Uttar Pradesh during the state 2017 assembly election.
Kumar said, "The pole is located near one of the BSP party worker Nawab Singh's house in Shahpur. The flag is still present there." He further added that the four people in this photo are his cousins - from the top, Jitendra Kumar (Titu), Rinku Kumar, Bablu Kumar and Bunti Kumar (Bhulla) and that they were hoisting a BSP flag.
Rohitash also shared the location with BOOM and sent us a video recording of the same place where the same blue flag can be seen hoisted atop the pole.
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