No, this video doesn’t show Ganesh idols being left at Sabarmati riverfront

A video showing many idols left at a riverfront is being shared widely on social media. The claim with the video is that the idols seen in the video are of Lord Ganesh and they were left at the footpath of Sabarmati riverfront as they weren’t allowed for visarjan. Let’s try to analyze the claim made in the post.

The archived version of the post can be found here.

Claim: Video of Ganesh idols left at Sabarmati riverfront as they weren’t allowed for visarjan.
Fact: Video is a month old and it shows ‘Dashama’ idols left on the footpaths of Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad. As part of the Ganesh visarjan too, people of Ahmedabad were requested to not immerse Ganesh idols in the river Sabarmati. Hence, the claim is MISLEADING.

When the video in the post was run through ‘InVid’ plugin, several keyframes of it were obtained. On subjecting these keyframes to reverse image search, a certain keyframe lead to the tweet that has the same video. In the tweet, the user mentioned that it is a one-month-old video and the idols seen in it weren’t of Lord Ganesh but of Goddess ‘Dashama’. With this information, when searched on Google with keywords, an article of “Patrika” published on August 11, 2019, was found. From the article, it was found that the people of Ahmedabad have left the ‘Dashama’ idols on the Sabarmati riverfront to protect the cleanliness of the river and these idols were later immersed in artificial ponds made for this purpose by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation. It is also found that the Ahmedabad Municipal Commissioner Vijay Nehra has lauded people’s efforts through a tweet in this regard.

Something amazing is happening in #Ahmedabad today.

Ordinary citizens have decided to keep #Sabarmati river clean.

Instead of immersing Dashama idols in the river, they have respectfully left them on the banks!!

Thousands and Thousands of them. Unbelievable change 🙏 pic.twitter.com/t5f0yh9ywr
— Vijay Nehra (@vnehra) August 11, 2019

Recently, in an interview with ‘India Tv’, AMC Commissioner Vijay Nehra has clarifiedthat the video is a month old one and the idols seen in it were of Goddess Dashama and not of Lord Ganesh.

As part of the Ganesh visarjan too, Vijay Nehra has urged the people of Ahmedabad not to immerse Ganesh idols in the river Sabarmati and instead asked them to carry out visarjan in the temporary ponds made by AMC for that purpose.