Ahead of upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, a purported screenshot of a Hindi news report is doing rounds on social media claiming that Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav has expressed the possibility of BJP winning the elections.
Recently, a photograph of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and Mulayam Singh Yadav sitting together at an event went viral after it was tweeted by union minister Arjun Meghwal. The photo was clicked at the wedding reception of Vice President Venkaiah Naidu’s granddaughter in Delhi where both leaders met.
A Facebook user shared the screengrab with a caption in Hindi that roughly translates in English to: “After meeting Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat, Mulayam Singh Yadav feels that BJP is forming government in Uttar Pradesh!! Jumman clap your hands.”
(Original:संघ प्रमुख मोहन भागवत से मिलने के बाद मुलायम सिंह यादव को लग रहा है उत्तर प्रदेश में बीजेपी सरकार बन रही है!! जुम्मन बजाओ ताली)
The image shows ‘BREAKING NEWS’ with ‘I can see BJP coming to power” written on it with Mulayam Singh Yadav’s photo. Similarly, in the second screenshot, ‘BJP-SP ideology on nationalism, border, and language is same’ is written.
The same image is also doing rounds on Twitter with the same claim.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the viral claim and found it to be misleading.
With the help of Reverse Image Search, we found the same image on social media platforms dated February 13, 2017.
Taking a cue, we ran a search using relevant keywords and found a video report uploaded on Samachar Plus channel on October 12, 2015.
As per this report, Mulayam Singh Yadav gave this statement with an eye on Bihar elections. He had then said that Bihar government hadn’t done any work and he could foresee BJP coming to power.
Below is a comparison between the viral screenshot and screenshot from the news report wherein it can be clearly seen that important information like the logo of the channel, the date of the news report have been deliberately edited out so that people do not understand their real context.
Moreover, we did not find any media report stating that Mulayam Singh Yadav has made any statement like this recently.
Therefore, screengrab from a 2015 report is being widely shared with a misleading claim.
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