In a major embarrassment for Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, the Mayor of the city has tweeted a picture from Seoul as Sabarmati riverfront. On November 6, Ahmedabad Mayor Bijal Patel tweeted an image purportedly of Ahmedabad Riverfront with a message, “It’s not Singapore , Malaysia, Dubai….. , It’s our Amdavad city. #MaruAmdavad #RiverFront night areal view. #WorldHeritageCity @AmdavadAMC @vnehra”.

One of the first handles to tweet this image was Manish Tilwani, who describes himself on twitter, “ITSM Sabarmati” and is followed by Piyush Goyal Office and several prominent BJP leaders. The mayor has tweeted an identical text including the spelling error, areal. Patel was also tagged by Tilwani in his tweet.

Vrushant Merchant, who’s Twitter bio reads, “Social Media Convener BJYM Karnavati” also made the identical claim.

Sabarmati Riverfront?

Alt News did a Google reverse image search and found a similar picture on the travel website Trip Advisor. The vantage point from which the photograph was shot is the restaurant ‘Walking on the Cloud’ located near the banks of Han river, South Korea.

To confirm the location of the image, we independently verified the views of the same place using Google Maps and found a daytime image from the same vantage point in live view.

View from Walking on the clouds restaurant, Seoul

A daytime image of Han River of Seoul, South Korea from a distance can also be found on Wikipedia.

As shown above, the images are from Seoul, South Korea and NOT Ahmedabad. Earlier in October this year, BJP Chhattisgarh had used images from Gujarat and Canada to showcase improved highways in the state.

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About the Author

Jignesh is a writer and researcher at Alt News. He has a knack for visual investigation with a major interest in fact-checking videos and images. He has completed his Masters in Journalism from Gujarat University.