The Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party has emerged as one of the leading competitors to the current BJP Government in Gujarat. The party recently announced that Gopal Italia — the party’s president of the Gujarat unit, will be contesting the election from the Katargam constituency in Surat.
Against this backdrop, a viral image showing a huge gathering is doing the rounds on social media. People are claiming the crowd to be from the roadshow of two AAP leaders — Gopal Italia and Raghav Chaddha, while the former is going to file his nomination in Surat.
A Facebook user posted the viral picture with a caption: गोपाल इटालिया ने आज सुरत में राघव चढ्ढा के साथ भव्य रोड शो करते हुए नामांकन दाखिल किया। यह तस्वीर गुजरात की जनता का मुड साफ साफ बयां कर रही है। (English translation: Gopal Italia filed his nomination today in Surat with Raghav Chadha performing a grand roadshow. This picture is clearly telling the mood of the people of Gujarat.)
You can check the image here.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the viral picture, and found it to be false.
Running a Reverse Image Search of the viral image, we traced a Facebook post on the official account of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on July 21, 2017. One of the images in the post match exactly with the viral image and the caption indicates that it is from the “Sahid Dibas” rally held in Kolkata on the same day to commemorate the brutal police killing of 13 innocent political workers on July 21, 1993.
We also came across an article, titled: Ekushe July: All roads lead to Dharmatala today, published on July 21, 2018, on the official website of the All-India Trinamool Congress (AITC). Although the article talks about the Sahid Dibas from 2018, the picture used in the article is from the 2017 rally.
Another news article, titled: Anti-BJP coalition gaining strength, says Mamata, published online in The Hindu, dated July 22, 2017, too, informs that it is from the Martyr’s day programme held in central Kolkata, and the picture in the article also matches exactly with the viral image.
We can clearly see the similarities between the two images, proving that the viral image is almost five years old and that too, from Kolkata, not Surat.
Therefore, we can conclusively say that the viral image, claiming a massive crowd turned up at Gopal Italiya and Raghav Chaddha’s roadshow in Surat, is false.
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