Rahul Gandhi shares old images as 2019 Assam floods

Congress MP Rahul Gandhi recently took to social media to appeal to his party workers to join the relief and rescue operations in flood-affected regions of the country. He posted four pictures on Facebook showing the impact of the inundation. “असम, बिहार, उतर प्रदेश, त्रिपुरा और मिजोरम में बाढ़ से हालात बेकाबू हो गए है। जन-जीवन बुरी तरह प्रभावित हो गया है। मैं इन सभी राज्यों के कांग्रेस कार्यकर्ताओं से अपील करता हूं वे आम लोगों के राहत और बचाव कार्य में तत्काल जुटे। (Translation: Situation in Assam, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Tripura, and Mizoram is out of control due to the floods. Public Life has been badly affected. I appeal to the Congress workers of all these states to immediately join the relief and rescue work of the common people.),” wrote Gandhi.

Fact-check

Picture 1 :

This image shows four kids sitting on the rooftop of a kaccha house half-submerged in water. A reverse image search on Google led Alt News to the original link of the photograph uploaded by Getty Images in 2016. According to the description of the image, it was shot during the 2016 floods in Assam.

Picture 2:

This image shows a man drowned in floodwaters till his nose carrying a child on his shoulders to keep him above water. A reverse image search on Google led Alt News to a 2013 blogpost which carried the same picture in the context of the 2013 Uttarakhand floods.

Two of the four images shared by Rahul Gandhi are old and unrelated to the 2019 floods. The Congress MP had also shared the same pictures on Twitter but later took them down. The images, however, still adorn his Facebook timeline, where they have been shared nearly 3,000 times.

Alt News had recently debunked old images from Bangladesh and Andhra Pradesh shared as flood-affected Assam. A video of a child washed by on the shore in Muzaffarpur, Bihar in an unrelated incident was also circulated by many as a consequence of the heavy downpour.