An image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a Gujarat village has been shared by many social media users to falsely claim that it shows him meeting Hindus displaced from Pakistan at a camp in Rajasthan’s Barmer.
CLAIM
On 2 March, actor and former Chairman of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) Gajendra Chauhan shared PM Modi’s image with the claim: “ये 31 वर्ष पुरानी दुर्लभ तस्वीर है, जब नरेंद्र मोदी बाड़मेर में पाकिस्तान से विस्थापित हिंदुओं से मिलने उनके कैम्प में पहुँचे थे. तब वो ना गुजरात के मुख्यमंत्री थे और ना ही देश के प्रधानमंत्री थे. दुख, मुशीबत मे लोगों के साथ खड़ा होना मोदी जी की फितरत में शामिल है।”
(Translated: This is a rare picture, which is 31 years old, when Narendra Modi reached a camp in Barmer to meet the Hindus displaced from Pakistan. He was neither the Chief Minister of Gujarat nor the Prime Minister of the country at that time. Sadness, standing with people in distressing times is in Modi ji’s nature.)
Delhi BJP Spokesperson Neetu Dabas had shared the image with the same claim in February this year.
Several social media users have shared the image on Twitter and Facebook with the same claim.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We performed a Google reverse image search and came across an article published on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s website in May 2014.
The article carried the viral image and caption along with it mentioned: ‘Narendra Modi in a village of Gujarat.’
The article mentioned that Narendra Modi was made the ‘Sambhaag Pracharak’ “as an appreciation of his activism and organisational work during the preceding years. He was given charge of South and Central Gujarat”
It further stated how his travels across the state of Gujarat increased in early 1980s. “This gave him the opportunity to visit every Taluka and almost every village in the state. This experience came very handy for him both as an organiser and as the Chief Minister,” the article added.
The said article makes no mention of Barmer or Hindus displaced from Pakistan.
While we haven’t been able to find the exact year in which the viral image was taken, with the help of Modi’s official website, we could ascertain that the image was taken in Gujarat and not in Rajasthan’s Barmer.
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