Visuals of empty chairs at a program held by BJP in 2018 are falsely linked to West Bengal election rally - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
March 26, 2021
A collage with a couple of images is being shared on social media claiming it as the visuals of empty chairs at a BJP election rally in West Bengal. These photos show BJP Leaders Amit Shah and Yogi Adityanath, and a set of empty chairs. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Photo of the empty chairs at a BJP election meeting in West Bengal.
Fact: The photos shared in the post are related to the 2018 BJP ‘Yuva Udgosh’ program in Varanasi city, Uttar Pradesh. These photos have nothing to do with the ongoing BJP election meetings for the West Bengal Assembly Elections. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On reverse image search of the photos shared in the post, a similar photo of the empty chairs is found in an article published by ‘Hindustan news’ website on 20 January 2018. The image is reported as the visuals of empty chairs at the BJP ‘Yuva Udgosh’ program, held at Varanasi city in Uttar Pradesh. Reporting the same, a few other news websites published similar photos of the empty chairs at the BJP rally in Varanasi. They can be seen here and here.
The Live Video of this meeting was found published on the official YouTube channel of ‘Bharatiya Janata Party’(BJP). In the video, we could see a similar visual of Amit Shah and Yogi Adityanath.
Amit Shah tweeted the photos of Varanasi ‘Yuva Udgosh’ program on 20 January 2018. They can be seen here and here. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the images shared in the post are old and not related to the ongoing BJP election meetings in West Bengal.
बाबा विश्वनाथ की नगरी काशी पूरे हिंदुस्तान की ऊर्जा का अक्षय स्रोत और आध्यात्मिक केंद्र है। इसके गौरव को एक इंच भी कम किये बगैर प्रधानमंत्री श्री @narendramodi जी और श्री @myogiadityanath जी के नेतृत्व में हम यहाँ के विकास के लिए कटिबद्ध हैं। pic.twitter.com/QXNEgEvwZU
To sum it up, 2018 photos from a BJP program in Uttar Pradesh are shared as recent visuals of empty chairs at a BJP election meeting in West Bengal.