PM Modi’s Morphed Chennai Floods Photo a ‘Standard Practice’: PIB

After the Centre issued on Monday, 2 April, and withdrew on Tuesday a directive on fake news, people outraged by the move have been actively pointing out incidents of ‘fake news’ that has been circulated by the government itself.

In 2015, the PIB had released a series of photos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi undertaking an aerial survey, among which one was called out for being ‘Photoshopped.’

On 3 April this year, journalist Rahul M tweeted the PIB’s response to a Right to Information query he had filed then seeking clarification on the ‘morphed’ image.

In 2015, I filed an RTI seeking clarification about the manipulated image of Modi inspecting Chennai during floods. Ministry of I&B responded to my query saying that the photo was manipulated "as per previous standard practice" #FakeNews pic.twitter.com/rbghIlNVT1

— Rahul M (@twrahul) April 3, 2018

Age-Old Practice

The PIB responded to Rahul’s RTI saying:

Merging two photographs of Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has been done as per previous standard practice.

The PIB had back then taken down the Photoshopped image immediately after it went viral. In a clarification issued later on 4 December 2015, the bureau had said that the morphed image had happened due to an “error of judgement.”