Assam FM Tweets Edited Pic of CAA Rally, Suggests State is Pro-Law

Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has shared two pictures of rallies held in Assam’s Dhemaji.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

CLAIM

Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has shared two pictures of rallies held in the state’s Dhemaji district. One of them, he claims, shows the crowd at All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) and another, the crowd at a BJP rally also held in Dhemaji.

Along with these two photos, he tweeted out the message: "Here are two Dhemaji pictures that sum up the mood in Assam. Need I say more?"

In the juxtaposed images, it appears that the crowd at the BJP, thereby the pro-CAA rally, is far larger than the one at the AASU, or anti-CAA, rally.

The underlying intention, along with Sarma's usage of the hashtag #AssamAlwaysAhead is clearly an attempt to show that Assam is largely in support of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act.

The tweet, from 10 January, had 995 retweets and 4.5k likes at the time of writing this post.

TRUE OR FALSE?

While both the photos are in fact from rallies held by the two parties in Dhemaji on 8 and 9 January respectively, Sarma has cropped the AASU photo to make it seem like the crowd there was less in strength. The crowd at the AASU rally was, however, much larger.

WHAT WE FOUND

On searching Twitter with the keywords 'Dhemaji #CAAProtests', we came across other photos and videos of the AASU rally, held on 9 January, which showed the scale of the rally.

One of videos was that of the crowd taken from a height by a drone, showing the gathering from all angles. The video was uploaded on Twitter by Assam-based journalist Atanu Bhuyan.

The Twitter account of the General Secretary of AASU, Lurinjyoti Gogoi, also uploaded various photos from the rally, which all showed that it had been well attended.

Another person also tweeted out a photo of the AASU rally, similar to the one used by Sarma in his tweet, but in its entirety.

We also found more photos of the BJP rally. Dr Numal Momin, a BJP MLA from Assam, also shared more photos of the BJP rally, one of which was the same as the one shared by Sarma.

The BJP's Dhemaji Twitter account also shared photos showing the crowd, as did Assam's CM Sarbananda Sonowal.

From the above posts, it is clear that Sarma had posted a cropped photo of the crowd to insinuate that there were lesser people at the AASU rally than at the BJP rally.

(This story was first debunked by Alt News.)

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