The Bharatiya Janata Party's Delhi unit, along with other BJP members, shared an edited image showing a man on a motorbike riding over a damaged road filled with potholes, purporting to show the current state of Delhi roads.
BOOM found that the original photo, which was taken on September 30, 2024, during Delhi CM Atishi's inspection of the road following sustained monsoon, did not contain the potholes seen in the viral image.
On December 28, 2024, Delhi recorded its highest single-day December rainfall in 101 years with 41.2 mm of rainfall in 24 hours. Soon after, BJP Delhi's verified Facebook page shared the doctored image with a Hindi caption, which translated to English as, "The condition of European standard roads after a short spell of rain."
Click here to view the above post, and here to view an archive.
BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya also shared the same edited image with a similar Hindi caption.
Click here to view the above post, and here to view an archive.
We also found a large number of BJP supporter handles on Facebook and X sharing the same doctored image with the false claim of showing Delhi roads with potholes after the recent rainfall.
Original Image Does Not Show Potholes
BOOM cropped out the image shared by BJP Delhi, and did a reverse image search on Google Lens, which led us to a very similar image shared on stock photo website Getty Images on September 30, 2024.
According to the caption of the photo, it was part of a series of photos taken towards the end of September 2024, showing Delhi CM Atishi inspecting damage on a road near Kalkaji, following months of sustained heavy rainfall in Delhi.
We noticed that this version of the image showed a damaged road, but did not contain as many potholes as seen in the image shared by BJP Delhi and Malviya.
We did a comparison of the two images (seen below), which makes it aptly clear that the recent version shared by BJP Delhi and Malviya had the extra potholes doctored into the photo.
Above: Image shared by BJP Delhi; Below: Original image shared on Getty Images on September 30, 2024
