Fact-check: Namaz offering displayed on UP tableau during SP’s rule in the state?

Two photos, purportedly of the Uttar Pradesh tableau from Republic Day parades, have been going viral on social media. The first shows a replica of Ayodhya’s Ram Temple, while the second shows a person offering namaz. Users are claiming that the second tableau is from the days of the Samajwadi Party’s rule in the state.

Twitter user Akash RSS shared these photos with the same claim (Archive link). Akash has been caught sharing false information on Twitter several times in the past. Another user named Purva Dixit tweeted the image and accompanying claim. Her post was liked by 500 handles at the time of writing.

Many others have juxtaposed both images and shared them online.

समाजवादी राज में उत्तर प्रदेश की झांकी और योगी राज में उत्तर प्रदेश की झांकी

बस यही सबसे बड़ा बदलाव है और यही बदलाव सबसे सुखद है

दोनों तस्वीर 👇🏽देखें ।। pic.twitter.com/FZFjUBCOIt

— पूर्वा दीक्षित (@dixit_purva) January 25, 2021

These photos have also made their way to Facebook and Twitter with the same claim. Alt News has received a few requests to verify the viral photo on our official mobile app.

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Fact-check

The claim being circulated online is completely false. While Uttar Pradesh did present a tableau featuring the Ram Temple in the recent Republic Day parade, the second photo is not Uttar Pradesh tableau. Alt News performed a reverse image search and found the original image in a News18 article. It states that this picture is of the 2011 Republic Day parade at New Delhi’s Rajpath. With a Maner Sharif theme, it was actually Bihar’s tableau that showed a Muslim person offering namaz. The caption reads that as soon as Amir Khusrao’s Sufi song was played, Maner’s 17th-century saint Makhdoom Shah Daulat appeared on the tableau. The photo was also shared as the Bihar tableau in India Today’s photo gallery of the parade that year.

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Prasar Bharati uploaded videos of the 2011 Republic Day parade on January 25, 2021. In the video given below, the tableau of Bihar appears at the 34:25 mark.

In 2011, PIB shared a list of the states participating in the parade along with the themes for their tableau. Here, the theme of the Bihar tableau is mentioned as Maner Sharif. This is also stated in a January 2011 Times of India story.

In 2011, the BJP-JD (U) alliance was in power in Bihar.

A photo of the Bihar tableau from the 2011 Republic Day parade with a man offering namaz was falsely shared as the Uttar Pradesh tableau under Samajwadi Party rule, allegedly with a Sufi saint theme.