Multiple images are being shared on social media claiming them as the pictures of roadshows conducted recently by the Home Minister Amit Shah in West Bengal. They can be seen here and here. Photos of public meetings with huge crowds are shared in these posts. Ahead of West Bengal Assembly elections 2021, these photos going viral on social media. Let’s verify the claims made in these posts.
Claim: Photos of recent roadshows conducted by the Home Minister Amit Shah in West Bengal.
Fact: Photos shared in these posts are old ones. The first photo was shot in 2014, during a public meeting conducted by Amit Shah in West Bengal. The other photo is also an old one. These photos have nothing to do with the recent roadshows conducting by the Home Minister Amit Shah in West Bengal. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Image-1:
On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, a similar photo was found in ‘Alamy’ website. It is mentioned as the picture of a rally addressed by Amit Shah in Kolkata during November 2014. The description of the photo mentions that ‘Supporters of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attend a rally by the party president Amit Shah (not pictured) in Kolkata November 30, 2014’.
When we searched for more sources using these keywords, a similar photo was found in an article published by ‘Daily Mail’ news website on ’01 December 2014’. In the article, this photo is mentioned as the picture of huge crowds at a public gathering organized by BJP on ‘30 November 2014’ in West Bengal.
Bharatiya Janata Party and Amit shah shared the visuals of this meeting on their official YouTube and Twitter handles. They can be seen here and here. From all these pieces of evidence, we can conclude that the photo shared in the post is an old one.
Image2:
On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, a similar photo was found in the official Flickr account of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. PM Modi shared this photo on ‘06 April 2018’. He shared this photo to greet all BJP karyakartas on the special occasion of BJP’s Sthapana Diwas.
The same photo is shared by few users and websites during 2018 and 2019. They can be seen here, here and here. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the photo shared in the post is an old one and has nothing to do with the recent roadshows conducted by Amit Shah in West Bengal.
To sum it up, old photos of BJP public meetings are falsely shared as the recent pictures of roadshows conducted by Amit Shah in West Bengal.