Old image of a banner about Lord Ram is being linked to ongoing farmers' protest - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
December 3, 2020
A post with an image of a banner which has a slogan about Modi, Yogi and Lord Ram is being widely circulated on social media with the claim that this banner was displayed during the ongoing protests by farmers opposing the new farm bills. Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Farmers displayed a banner against Lord Ram in the ongoing farmers’ protest.
Fact: This image of a banner with a slogan about Lord Ram was featured during the farmers’ protest in Delhi back in 2018. This has nothing to do with the ongoing farmers’ protests. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
Reverse image search of the photo led us to a 2018 Facebook post which shared the same image. According to this post, the image was shared associating it with farmers’ protest back then.
Taking a cue from the time period of the Facebook post, Google search with relevant keywords led us to a tweet by a news agency which shared an image of the same banner. According to the tweet, the image is related to farmers protest near Jantar Mantar in Delhi in 2018. Further, we found few news articles related to these protests by farmers around the same time period, these news articles can be read here and here.
Farmers reach Jantar Mantar to carry forward the second day of protests.
Catch all the updates from the #FarmersMarch here: https://t.co/GWQGcVJKOy pic.twitter.com/irheK2nI5X
In the images shared by the news agency, we can spot AIKM (All India Kisan Sabha) placards along with the banner. Further search on the AIKM Facebook page led us to images of the same banner which were posted back in 2018. These can be seen here and here.
We could not find any news articles associating this banner to the ongoing farmers’ protest. With all these pieces of evidence, we can conclude that the banner is associated with farmers protest back in 2018 and has nothing to do with the ongoing farmers’ protest.
In the light of the ongoing farmers protest opposing the new farm laws, posts like these are being widely shared on social media platforms with misleading claims.
To sum it up, 2018 banner against Lord Ram during the farmers’ protest in Delhi is falsely linked to ongoing farmers’ protest.