2019 video of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation removing Dashama idols is shared with a misleading narrative - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
September 8, 2022
A video is being shared on social media claiming it as the recent visuals of Hindu gods’ idols being removed using bulldozers. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a bulldozer removing Hindu gods’ idols.
Fact: The video shared in the post was taken in 2019, when the Ahmedabad Municipal corporation was lifting Dashama idols on the riverbank of Sabarmati in Ahmedabad. In 2019, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation requested citizens to leave Dashama idols on the riverbank of Sabarmati to prevent pollution. Following the municipal corporation’s requests, devotees left their idols on the riverbank of Sabarmati. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
On reverse image search of the screenshots in the video, a video with similar visuals was found tweeted by a journalist in response to a tweet made by IAS officer Vijay Nehra on 11 August 2019. IAS Vijay Nehra in the tweet appreciated Ahmedabad citizens’ gesture of leaving the Dashama idols on the riverbank of Sabarmati in Ahmedabad. Multiple users shared the same video on social media in August 2019. They can be seen here and here.
In 2019, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation requested citizens to leave Dashama idols on the riverbank of Sabarmati to prevent pollution. Following the municipal corporation’s request, devotees left their idols on the riverbank of Sabarmati. The video shared in the post was taken when bulldozers were lifting the dashama idols placed on the riverbank of the Sabarmati River. Reporting the same information, the ‘Divya Bhaskar’  published a similar photo of a bulldozer lifting the dashama idols in an article published in 2019. A few other news articles and videos that reported this incident of Ahmedabad residents leaving their idols on the riverfront of  Sabarmati can be seen here, here and here.
To sum it up, a 2019 video showing the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation removing the Dashama idols placed on the riverbank of Sabarmati shared with a misleading narrative.