Was Bandra-Worli Sea Link Inaugurated During PM Modi’s Tenure? Nope!

A photo of a flyover is being circulated on social media crediting Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the construction of the said road.

We found that the said photo is of the Bandra-Worli Sea Link (BWSL) which was inaugurated in 2009 by the then United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi.

CLAIM

The claim in Hindi along with the photo reads: यह कोई अमेरीका फ़्रांस लन्दन का ब्रीज नही है यह बांद्रा के मुंबई का ब्रीज है, वाह मोदी जी.

(Translation: This is not America, France, or any bridge in London, it is the bridge of Bandra in Mumbai, wow Modi ji.)

The tweet posted by user 'Satya Sanatan' has over 7,000 likes at the time of writing this article.

Several social media users also shared the claim and the archived versions can be accessed here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

We found that the claim is false and the Bandra-Worli Sea Link was inaugurated by Congress president Sonia Gandhi in 2009.

Upon a reverse image on Google, we found the photo of the BWSL in a page called 'the constructor.org'.

Taking cue from here, we used relevant keywords and looked for news reports about the inauguration of the sea link.

A news report by The Times of India published on 30 June 2009 read that Gandhi had inaugurated the 5.6-km, eight lane, cable-supported sea bridge.

The work for building the bridge commenced in October 2004.

We also found the images of the inauguration on Getty Images. The caption on one of the images read, "Congress president along with other leaders and delegates before the inauguration of the Bandra-Worli Sea Link on June 30 2009 in Mumbai, India."

Next, we looked for videos of the inauguration on YouTube and found one by NDTV India that was aired in 2009.

In another video by NewsX, we found the visuals of Sonia Gandhi inaugurating the BWSL in 2009.

Clearly, the BWSL inaugurated by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and its work completed in 2009 has been falsely credited to PM Modi who was sworn-in as India's PM in 2014.

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