A collage of images is being shared on social media claiming them to be the recent pictures of the demolished Muslim households in Unnao and Farrukhabad (Uttar Pradesh). This post claims that the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh is intentionally targeting Muslims and bulldozing their houses in the state. Congress leader Salman Khurshid had also shared these images with a similar claim on his social media handles. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
The archived version of the post can be seen here.
Claim: Recent pictures of the bulldozed Muslim households in Unnao and Farrukhabad.
Fact: The images shared in the post show old pictures from an encroachment drive conducted in 2016, during the SP government and Akhilesh Yadav’s tenure as CM in Uttar Pradesh. This demolition drive was conducted in Loha Mandi and Bartan Bazar areas in Unnao. The demolished houses seen in these pictures were not bulldozed by the present Yogi Adityanath government in UP. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
On reverse image search of the images shared in the post, we found that ‘Amar Ujala’ journalist Shubham Nigam had shared the same images in his Facebook post on 26 May 2016. Shubham Nigam reported them as the pictures from an encroachment drive conducted in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh. Yogi Adityanath was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in March 2017. In 2016, Akhilesh Yadav was the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.
The ‘Amar Ujala’ news website published multiple articles in May 2016, reporting the details of this encroachment drive conducted in Unnao. They can be seen here and here. Sharing the same photos, these articles reported that the encroachment drive was conducted in Loha Mandi and Bartan Bazar areas located between Ataullah and Chhota Chauraha in Unnao. According to these reports, the district administration demolished around 85 illegal buildings constructed in these areas.
Lately, there are news reports that the Yogi Adityanath government had bulldozed crores worth of illegal constructions in Farrukhabad and Unnao. A few news articles that reported these latest anti-encroachment drives in Farrukhabad and Unnao can be seen here and here. It is nowhere reported that only Muslim houses were bulldozed during these encroachment drives. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the photos shared in the post show old pictures from an anti-encroachment drive conducted in Akhilesh Yadav’s regime.
To sum it up, old photos from Akhilesh Yadav’s time as UP CM were shared as the recent pictures of bulldozed Muslim houses by the Yogi Adityanath government in UP.
