Left: Photo tweeted by RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav (Middle); Right: Photo clicked from the same angle by news agency ANI
New Delhi: While trying to ‘save India from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’, the opposition seems to have picked up a trick or two usually used by the Bharatiya Janata Party government.
In a display of opposition unity, political heavyweights, including West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, rebel JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, joined Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav for a mega ‘BJP Bhagao, Desh Bachao‘ rally in Patna today.
While the mainstream media and Congress president Rahul Gandhi gave the rally a miss, the opposition was able to gather quite a crowd and create a buzz on social media.
As#DeshBachao started trending on the top position on Twitter, Yadav tweeted “No ‘Face’ will stand in front of Lalu’s ‘Base’. Come & Count as much as u can in Gandhi Maidan, Patna.”
However, a quick comparison with a photo taken from the same angle by Asian News International (ANI) shows that the blurry photo tweeted by Lalu was photoshopped to make the size of the crowd bigger.
Left: Photo tweeted by RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav; Right: Photo clicked from the same angle by news agency ANI
This. Read the full thread. Why political communications has forever changed ? https://t.co/UEu3NocYQF
— Baijayant Jay Panda (@PandaJay) August 27, 2017
Good to see ANI is taking on the responsibility of debunking false/doubtful claims. Look forward to this being done across party lines ?? https://t.co/SAckJM3o5P
— Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) August 27, 2017
Here’s an aerial video of the rally that shows how many people actually attended the event.
Aerial view of the #DeshBachao rally.
Video courtesy: @ANI pic.twitter.com/7xxv2VFOlU
— Karnika Kohli (@KarnikaKohli) August 27, 2017
This is not the first time politicians have resorted to using fake pictures to control the narrative.
From time to time politicians like Babul Supriyo, Meenakshi Lekhi, Nirmala Sitharaman and Sambit Patra have also fallen for fake news shared by their own propaganda machinery.
While Union power minister Piyush Goyal recently used a photograph showing a landscape destroyed by collieries to promote coal mining and brag about his ministry’s achievements, the Press Information Bureau tweeted a photoshopped image of Modi visiting flood-hit areas of Chennai in 2015.