2016 Image From Patna Shared as Cities Not Supporting 'Bharat Bandh'

The 2016 photo is being shared claiming to show open cities during the Bharat Bandh called by protesting farmers.

An old photograph of a busy street is going viral across social media, with users claiming that it shows the current situation in their towns and cities.

Sharing the photograph with names of different places, people are claiming that the respective place is completely 'open' and does not support the nationwide Bharat Bandh called by protesting farmers as they continue to demand that the three contentious farm laws be repealed.

However, we found that the photograph of the busy road is at least five years old. Originally showing Patna, the photograph has been on the internet since 2016 and has been hosted on websites discussing Patna, Bihar's traffic issues.

CLAIM

The photograph is going viral online, with social media users claiming, "My city is fully open. Surat do not support Bharat Bandh (sic)”.

In different versions of the claim, 'Surat' is replaced by other city names such as Pune or Delhi.

At the time of writing this article, this tweet by Twitter user Shubham Pathak was reshared by over 1,100 users.

The post was widely shared across Facebook as well.

More claims across Twitter and Facebook with different city and town names that do not support the bandh can be seen here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We ran a reverse image search on the photograph in the viral claim, which led us to older versions of the photo on the internet.

The oldest photo we found was uploaded to a website called Patna Beats, on 2 November 2016. The article carrying the photo discussed the introduction of the 'odd-even' traffic rule in Patna, which aimed at reducing traffic woes in the city.

Further, we found news reports by Dainik Bhaskar from 2018 and 2020. Both articles covered issues related to Bihar's Patna.

As there are multiple past instances of the same photograph being used for articles related to Patna in Bihar, one can conclude that it does not show many different towns and cities remaining open on 27 September, when protesting farmers called for a nationwide strike.

The photo has been on in the internet for at least five years, and shows a busy road in Patna.

(With inputs from SMHoaxSlayer)

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