As leaders of several political parties are campaigning in the poll-bound states of West Bengal, Kerala, Assam, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu, a set of images showing empty chairs along with the pictures of Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath have gone viral.
However, both the images are from 2018 when Amit Shah was delivering a speech at the Yuva Udgosh rally in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi.
CLAIM
The claim along with the images reads: “अभी तो आगाज है, अंजाम क्या होगा।” (Translation: This is the starting, what will be the outcome)
The post shared by Facebook user ‘Adv Shalini’ had garnered over 900 shares at the time of publishing the article.
The images have gone viral on Facebook, with the post being shared by another Facebook user, ‘Dr Siraj Khan’. That post had garnered over 200 shares at the time of publishing the article.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We ran a reverse image search on the photo showing empty chairs on Yandex and came across a tweet shared in 2019 that suggested that the image was from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.
We then searched YouTube using keywords ‘Amit Shah address Varanasi Yogi’ and came across a video uploaded in January 2018 on the official handle of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP).
The caption along with the video stated that Shah was delivering a speech at Yuva Udgosh Rally in Varanasi on 20 January 2018.
Shah had also tweeted about the event in 2018 and one can see that he is wearing the same attire as in the viral image.
We also came across a video uploaded by media outlet Live Hindustan on the said event and found similar visuals as in the viral image.
WHAT ABOUT THE IMAGE SHOWING EMPTY CHAIRS?
A Yandex reverse image search led us to an article published by Live Hindustan in January 2018 on the same event that carried the viral image.
Media outlets such as Navbharat Times and Amar Ujala had also then carried visuals of empty chairs seen in the said rally. The Navbharat Times report mentioned that people didn’t turn up in the numbers as expected because of which thousands of chairs remained vacant.
Meanwhile, reports published by Live Hindustan and Amar Ujala also showed visuals of the crowd seen at the rally.
The crowd can also be seen in another tweet shared by Amit Shah in 2018.
Evidently, old images from Home Minister Amit Shah’s address in Varanasi have been revived amid the ongoing election season.
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