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| - Fact Check: BBC has not called Left rally in Kolkata the world's largest political gathering
AFWA has found the claim to be false. In fact, BBC had not even covered Sunday's Brigade Parade Ground event.
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India Today Fact Check
The picture is morphed. In fact, BBC has not carried any news of Sunday’s Brigade Parade Ground event.
With assembly elections in West Bengal round the corner, the Left Front had organised a massive gathering at Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Ground on February 28. Allies Congress and the newly formed Indian Secular Front also participated in the rally. Many on social media now claim that according to BBC, this was the “world’s largest peaceful political gathering”.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim to be false. In fact, BBC had not even covered Sunday’s Brigade Parade Ground event.
The archived versions of similar posts can be seen here and here.
AFWA investigation
There are several elements in the viral post that raise doubts about the authenticity of the claim. The alleged graphics plate misspells “gathering” as “geathering”, which is quite unlikely for an institution like BBC.
We then went through the different websites of BBC, but did not find any report related to the recent Brigade Parade Ground gathering. BBC has a dedicated page for news related to Kolkata. However, we did not find any report related to the Left-Congress-ISF rally even on this page.
We also carried out a search with the keyword “Kolkata” on the BBC World Facebook page. The last news on Kolkata published in this page was on May 21, 2020, relating to Cyclone Amphan.
To further confirm the matter, we got in touch with the press office of BBC. Tess Colley from the publicity team of BBC World sent us an email stating, “I can confirm that the BBC has not published such a story.”
Therefore, it can be concluded that the graphics plate along with the BBC logo is morphed. BBC has not termed the February 28 Brigade Parade Ground rally as the “world’s largest peaceful political gathering”.
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