“These Pictures from Jodhpur ( Ashok Gehlot Bastion ) has given panic attack to Congress leadership.” tweeted Rishi Bagree, who is followed by PM Modi, on December 4, 2018 along with a set of images. He claimed that the crowd surge at PM Modi’s election rally in Jodhpur is illustrative of the neck and neck contest between the Congress party and BJP in the state. The tweet has now been deleted.
In response to Bagree’s tweet, several individuals have claimed that the images are not representative of the recent PM Modi rally in Jodhpur on December 3, 2018 and that they date back to 2013.
What is the truth?
Alt News did a Twitter search for finding the images tweeted since November 28, 2013 with keywords, “Narendra Modi and Jodhpur”.
Image 1
Amit Malviya, BJP IT head and MLA Piyush Desai had tweeted one of the images on November 29, 2013 with the identical narrative.
This is a visual from @narendramodi‘s rally in Jodhpur today. Now we know why #Congress is worried.. pic.twitter.com/Xa85BOWC30
— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) November 29, 2013
Image 2
One more image from a different angle was also tweeted by several individual users (1, 2) claiming it to be of PM Modi’s rally in Jodhpur on November 29 & 30, 2013.
One Twitter handle, @Lala_The_Don had also tweeted the same image on December 3, 2018 with the same narrative as suggested by Bagree.
We found that the first two images posted by Rishi Bagree are from PM Modi’s rally of year 2013 and not 2018.
Image 3
According to an individual user, this is a featured image of the video of the Kisan Hunkar Rally organized by Rashtriya Loktantrik Party founder Hanuman Beniwal, was posted on YouTube on Jan 29, 2018. Look at the image comparison posted below.
Using the Google reverse image tool, Alt News found that several video of the Kisan Hunkar rally in Barmer uploaded on various platforms have the identical featured image.
Alt News couldn’t independently verify this image, although it is certain that the image existed way back in January 2018 as the thumbnail of the video was posted at the same time.
Rishi Bagree has been repeatedly caught spreading misinformation on social media. A compilation of such instances can be read here. This time around he has not only shared pictures from PM Modi’s 2013 rally but also tried to pass off a picture of Kisan Hunar rally by Independent MLA Hanuman Beniwal as that of Modi’s rally.