On 12 April 2024, speaking at an election rally, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a veiled attack on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, RJD supremo Lalu Yadav, and Tejaswi Yadav, accusing them of consuming non-vegetarian food during the Sawan and Navratri festivals. In this context, a collage of two pictures of Union Minister Smriti Irani is going viral (here, here, here, & here). In one picture, she can be seen holding a fish, and in the other, she is holding a portrait of Goddess Durga. The claim accompanying the post suggests that the picture was taken recently when Smriti Irani was holding a fish during the holy festival of Navaratri. Through this article, let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Photo showing Union minister Smriti Irani holding a fish was taken during the holy festival of Navratri.
Fact: The viral image was taken on 06 April 2024, when Smriti Irani received a large fish as a gift from a local fisherman during her campaign for RC Paul Kanagaraj, the BJP candidate for North Chennai. This year, Chaitra Navaratri began on 09 April 2024, and ends on 17 April 2024. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
To learn more about these viral images, we conducted a Google reverse image search on them.
Image-1:
Upon conducting a reverse image search of the picture featuring Smriti Irani holding a fish, we found this image on the Instagram page of Hindustan Times (archived link). The accompanying text read, “On 06 April 2024, BJP candidate Smriti Irani during an election campaign rally in Chennai North constituency.”
Taking this as a cue, we conducted a relevant keyword search on the internet to learn more about this image and the election rally. This search led us to several news reports (here, & here) featuring similar images of Smriti Irani holding a fish. According to these reports, on 06 April 2024, Smriti Irani received a big fish as a gift from a local fisherman during the campaign for RC Paul Kanagaraj, the BJP candidate for North Chennai in the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha Elections.
Image-2:
We found the picture of Smriti Irani holding the portrait of Goddess Durga in a post (archived link), along with a collage of pictures posted on Smriti Irani’s official X(Twitter) handle on 06 April 2024. The caption of this post highlighted her participation in the election campaign in Chennai North alongside BJP Chennai North MP candidate Kanagaraj, and her interactions with the women of the Tamil Nadu Pravasi Mahila Sangathan.
Upon searching, we found that Chaitra Navratri (here, here) began on 09 April 2024 and will conclude on 17 April with Ram Navami celebrations. From this information, it is clear that both of these pictures were taken before Chaitra Navratri, which commenced on 09 April 2024.
To sum up, this image of Smriti Irani holding a fish was taken on 06 April 2024 before Chaitra Navratri, which commenced on 09 April 2024.
