On Facebook, a few users are sharing the picture of a collapsed road bridge and are alleging- “Planned by then CM Modi, inaugurated by PM Modi, Jamnagar-Junagarh highway bridge collapsed within 3 months of inauguration!”. Let’s try to check the veracity of the claims made in the post.
Claim: The collapsed ‘Jamnagar-Junagarh highway bridge’ was inaugurated by PM Modi three months ago.
Fact: The Jamnagar-Junagarh highway bridge has collapsed at Jamkandorna area of Rajkot district. This road bridge was found to exist at Jamkandorna atleast since the year 2009 (i.e. much before Modi has become the Prime Minister). Hence the claim made in the post stands FALSE.
When the image in the post is run through Google Reverse Image technique with a filter “road bridge collapsed”, it was found in an article published by “DeshGujarat” newspaper. According to this article, the bridge on Jamnagar -Junagadh road near Satodak village at around 14 km from Jamkandorna has collapsed in June 2019.
When looked for any additional information regarding the age of the bridge, no relevant information was found in the article. When googled for more information about the collapsed bridge, another article published by “Sandesh” news agency was found. In this article, the age of the bridge was discussed as ‘years old’ but the year of construction was not mentioned.
From the data available in the newspaper articles, Factly was able to trace the location of the bridge on Google Earth. Based on the information available from the historical satellite imagery, the bridge was found to be existing at least since 2009 i.e. much before Modi has become the Prime Minister. So, this ‘Jamnagar-Junagarh highway bridge’ wasn’t inaugurated by PM Modi three months ago. In the below screenshot of the Google Earth, the bridge’s location was marked with an indicator in colour ‘red’.
Speaking with Times of India correspondent, Rajkot collector Rahul gupta said that the bridge collapsed on June 19 was built 45 years ago by the state roads and buildings department, and was later handed over to National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). Gupta added that the bridge was never inaugurated by PM Modi and was in a dilapidated condition much before it collapsed.
To sum it up, this collapsed Jamnagar-Junagarh highway bridge wasn’t inaugurated by PM Modi three months ago.
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