By: Archana Naresh
April 9 2021
False: There were a lot of empty seats at a BJP 2021 election rally in West Bengal.
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Fact-Check
The Verdict False
Social media users have been posting an old photo to falsely claim that a BJP election rally in West Bengal was poorly attended.
Claim ID cbe6f301
Social media users have been posting an old photo to falsely claim that a BJP election rally in West Bengal was poorly attended.Social media users are using old images to claim that there were empty chairs at a BJP election meeting in West Bengal. One image shows Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP leader Mahendra Nath Pandey, and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath sitting on the dais. Another image shows rows of empty chairs. But we found that these images are not taken from the election rally in West Bengal. On conducting a reverse image search, we came across news reports published by Hindustan News and Amar Ujala, which carried the same image of empty chairs. The photos were clicked at an event called the youth assimilation program (Yuva Udgosh) organized by BJP in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, on January 20, 2018. Moreover, the three BJP leaders wore the same clothes as seen in the viral image, and the background setting matched perfectly. The photos belong to a three-year-old event and not from any recent rally in West Bengal.