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| - Fact Check: Misleading Facebook post of 'Pakistani flags' in BJP rally goes viral
A few days back, social media was abuzz with a similar claim that "Pakistan flags" were waved in Rahul Gandhi's rally in Kerala's Wayanad, the second seat the Congress president is contesting.
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India Today Fact Check
The picture was of Islamic flags waved in a Shiv Sena- BJP rally in Malegaon in 2009.
Were Pakistan flags waved at a BJP rally in Kashmir? Well, many users in Facebook are claiming this.
One Facebook user by the name Vinay Srivastava posted a still image of a political rally showing green flags with a white star and crescent beside saffron and BJP flags. This goes with a Hindi caption, Pakistan flags in BJP rally in Kashmir along with BJP flags.
India Today’s Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the post to be misleading. This is a 10-year-old picture from a joint Shiv Sena-BJP rally in Maharashtra’s Malegaon. The green flags are not of Pakistan but are religious flags associated with Islam.
A few days back, social media was abuzz with a similar claim that Pakistan flags were waved in Rahul Gandhi’s rally in Kerala’s Wayanad, the second seat the Congress president is contesting.
AFWA debunked the claim, confirming that the green flags were of Congress ally IUML (Indian Union Muslim League) and not of Pakistan.
The Facebook post by Vinay Srivastava was shared more than 500 times at the time of writing this story. This was posted on April 7. On the same day, another user Rajkumar Singh posted the same picture with almost the same claim.
By reverse search with the help of Yandex, we found that the viral picture was used several times by various bloggers. One blogger, Malegaon- My home town, used this viral picture in 2010. The blog claimed that the picture is of a Shiv Sena-BJP rally in Malegaon during the 2009 parliamentary election campaign.
With this clue, we looked for news reports related to the image, using keywords such as Pakistan flags in Shiv Sena-BJP rally. On October, 2009, Ummid.com reported about this event from Malegaon. Ummid.com is a news portal run by Awaz Multimedia & Publications.
The report said that the Shiv Sena and BJP had organised an election rally for Dadaji Dagdu Bhuse, the alliance candidate in Malegaon (Outer) assembly constituency at College Ground in Malegaon Camp. It also said that the green flags resembling Pakistani Flags surprised everyone.
Since there was no credible mainstream media report on the issue, we spoke to Bhuse, now a minister of state for rural development in the Maharashtra cabinet and the sitting MLA from Malegaon Outer assembly constituency.
Bhuse confirmed it was not Pakistan flags but green flags associated with Islam that were waved at the rally in 2009, along with Shiv Sena and BJP flags. Bhuse said a sizeable number of voters in his constituency are Muslims, adding, So anybody can come with the religious green flag at my rally, but I think calling them Pakistan flags are completely wrong.
India Today had earlier clarified the difference between a Pakistan flag and a green flag associated with Islam. This story can be read here.
The Islamic flag has a white star and crescent in the middle of a green flag while the Pakistan flag has an extra white band on its left.
Hence we conclude that the viral claim over Pakistan flags being waved at a BJP rally in Kashmir is misleading. The picture is from a Shiv Sena-BJP rally in Malegaon in 2009, where Islamic flags were waved along with saffron flags.
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