A photograph showing people sleeping on the road at night is being widely shared across social media to claim that it shows candidates who had travelled long distances to appear for the Uttar Pradesh Teacher Eligibility Test (UP-TET), a professional examination for those aspiring to teach in government schools in the state.
The claim comes in the backdrop of the test's question paper being leaked on a WhatsApp group and the examination consequently being postponed.
However, we found that the photograph had no connection to the TET examination and it showed members of the Rajasthan Berojgar Ekikrat Mahasangh sleeping outside Eco Park in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.
CLAIM
The claim is being shared across social media platforms with various claims that connect it to the cancellation of the Uttar Pradesh Teacher Eligibility Test. Some of the claims on Twitter used the hashtag '#UPTET'.
This post by Facebook user 'Vipin Anand Paswan' was shared more than 250 times at the time of writing this article.
The post was shared without context by Congress member Imran Pratapgarhi and can be seen here.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
On conducting a reverse image search on the photo, we came across a tweet by LP Pant, national editor of Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar. In his tweet, he wrote that it was a photograph of unemployed youth from Rajasthan, who had travelled from Jaipur to Lucknow.
Using this as a clue, we added the word 'Rajasthan' to our reverse image search and found an article by Dainik Bhaskar that carried a video similar to the photograph in the viral claim.
The article noted that people from the Rajasthan Berozgar Ekikrat Mahasangh had travelled from Rajasthan's Jaipur to Uttar Pradesh's Lucknow to speak to Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, as the party had made campaign promises to fight unemployment in the state, but had failed to fulfil them.
It added that the photo showed visuals from Saturday night, when protestors who had reached Lucknow spent the night out in the open and many protesters who sat on a hunger-strike outside Congress' office, fell sick due to the weather and had to be taken to the hospital.
Speaking to The Quint, Upen Yadav, President of Rajasthan Berozgar Ekakrit Mahasangh said that the photo was not related to UP TET and was from their protest.
"It was taken on the night of the 27 November, when we slept outside in the cold. Our protest began in Jaipur 47 days ago and is still going on there, but some of our representatives have come to Lucknow."Upen Yadav, President of the Rajasthan Berozgar Ekakrit Mahasangh
Yadav shared more visuals of the protest with us, and noted that the protesters would continue their hunger strike outside the party's office until they could meet and speak to Congress' national secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra regarding their issues.
He also shared a link to a Facebook Live broadcast from 27 November, which carried the same visuals as seen in the claim.
We also came across a tweet by the official Twitter account of 'UP Police Fact Check' which noted that the photo showed youths from Rajasthan.
The tweet also noted that candidates who had travelled to appear for the test are being sent back home in UPSRTC buses on the basis of their admit cards.
Evidently, a photo of protesters from the Rajasthan Berozgar Ekakrit Mahasangh sleeping outside in the cold was wrongly shared in connection with the postponed UP-TET exam.
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