CLAIM
A photo of Bollywood actor Sunny Deol is viral on social media claiming that he has joined BJP and will be fighting the elections from Rohtak. In the photo, Deol can be seen interacting with Haryana Cabinet Minister and BJP MLA Ram Bilas Sharma.
The post has been uploaded by a Facebook page called I Like :- प्रधानमंत्री and has 1.2K reactions and 840 shares. The text of the post says: सनी देओल हुए भाजपा में शामिल रोहतक से लड़ेंगे चुनाव (Translation: Sunny Deol joins BJP, will fight elections from Rohtak)
TRUE OR FALSE?
On conducting a reverse image search, we came across the Twitter account of one Gautam RB Sharma, which had shared the photo. The post on Twitter was dated to 25 December 2017.
On searching for Gautam RB Sharma on Facebook, the result was a page called Gautam Ram Bilas Sharma, who is the son of the minister. The Facebook page had the same photo, as well as other ones of the minister with Bobby Deol as well as Dharmendra. These were also dated to 25 December 2017.
In one of the photos, Dharmendra was dressed in advocate's clothing, along with director and actor Satish Kaushik.
This showed that the photos were taken on the sets of a recent film in which Dharmendra played a lawyer, which turned out to be Yamla Pagla Deewana Phir Se, which released in 2018.
Therefore, it is clear that the photo of Deol and Sharma is not related to the elections, but had been taken on set.
It may be noted at this point that there are rumours of the actor joining BJP and contesting from Punjab's Gurdaspur seat. In this context, another video of Deol campaigning has also been going viral recently.
However, these posts do not make it clear that the video is that of Deol campaigning for BJP candidate Satyapal Singh in 2014.
A screenshot of the video had been posted by a Facebook page called एक भारत श्रेष्ठ भारत on 20 March 2014.
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