Actor and former FTII chairman Gajendra Chauhan shared a black and white photograph on March 2 with the claim, “This is a rare 31-year-old picture when Narendra Modi met Hindus displaced from Pakistan in a camp in Barmer. He was neither the Chief Minister of Gujarat nor the Prime Minister of the country. It’s in his nature to stand by those in need.” Over 700 people retweeted Chauhan’s tweet as of this writing.
ये 31 वर्ष पुरानी दुर्लभ तस्वीर है,
जब नरेंद्र मोदी बाड़मेर में पाकिस्तान से विस्थापित हिंदुओं से मिलने उनके कैम्प में पहुँचे थे.
तब वो ना गुजरात के मुख्यमंत्री थे और ना ही देश के प्रधानमंत्री थे.
दुख, मुशीबत मे लोगों के साथ खड़ा होना मोदी जी की फितरत में शामिल है। pic.twitter.com/jh5Shc81Jq— Gajendra Chauhan (@Gajjusay) March 2, 2021
Several other users have shared this picture with the same claim. One Prabhakar Singh Parihar’s tweet was retweeted by more than 200 people.
The photograph is also widespread on Facebook.
False claim
A reverse image of this picture takes one to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s website narendramodi.in. The picture is available on the website’s gallery. However, Gajendra Chauhan’s claim that Prime Minister Modi visited Hindus displaced from Pakistan in a camp in Rajasthan’s Barmer is false. The photograph was shot in Gujarat. It was uploaded on PM Modi’s website in May 2014.
The picture is captioned ‘Narendra Modi in a village of Gujarat’. The website states that “Narendra Modi was made the ‘Sambhaag Pracharak’ (the equivalent of a regional organiser) as an appreciation of his activism and organisational work during the preceding years. He was given charge of South and Central Gujarat”.
It further says, “His travels across Gujarat continued and increased through the early 1980s. This gave him the opportunity to visit every Taluka and almost every village in the state.”
The website does not state that Modi visited Barmer or Hindus displaced from Pakistan. Furthermore, Gajendra Chauhan claimed that the picture was taken 31 years ago, i.e. around 1990. However, it is older. According to the Prime Minister’s website, it was shot sometime in the 1980s.
A photograph of Narendra Modi in Gujarat when he was a regional organiser has been falsely shared as him visiting a camp in Rajasthan’s Barmer housing Hindus displaced from Pakistan.
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