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| - Fact Check: Doctored image shared to advertise BJP's 'blooming' foothold in Tamil Nadu
An image of BJP cadres hoisting a party flag on a very tall flagpole in Tamil Nadu has gone viral on social media. India Today's Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the image to be doctored.
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India Today Fact Check
This image is doctored. In the original image, the men are hoisting a BSP flag. The Telangana spokesperson of BSP tweeted the original photo on May 31.
The Tamil Nadu unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party staged a protest in Chennai against fuel price hikes on June 2. Reportedly, the event was attended by over 15,000 party cadres.
Amid these developments, a post cheering for BJP workers in Tamil Nadu has gone viral on social media. "Lotus is blooming in Tamil Nadu," several users captioned a photo that showed four men hoisting the party flag, standing on each other's shoulders.
The photo was tweeted by multiple verified handles including Himachal Pradesh BJP spokesperson Prajwal Busta and former North Delhi Mayor Ravinder Gupta.
The India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found the viral image was doctored. In the viral photo, BJP’s flag replaced the Bahujan Samaj Party flag.
AFWA Probe
A reverse search of the image showed a handful of results. The top result was a May 31 tweet from the account of Shirisha Swaero Akinapally, the spokesperson of the BSP's Telangana unit. However, in this photo, the men were seen hoisting a BSP flag.
"Our brothers and sisters climbed the ladder and hoisted the blue flag at the heartbeat of the masses. Millions of such youths are following in the footsteps of @RSPraveenSwaerofor the establishment of a Bahujan Rajya Sabha in Telangana," Akinapally wrote in Telugu. It was retweeted by many, including BSP Telangana state coordinator RS Praveen Kumar.
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@RSPraveenSwaero .@Mayawati @AnandAkash_BSP @ramjigautambsp pic.twitter.com/gkLh8FnnBz — Shirisha Swaero Akinapally (@ShirishaSwaero) May 31, 2022
We also found the photo with the BSP flag uploaded on a Pinterest page called "Ambedkari Status".
We ran the two images on the image error analysis platforms Forensically and FotoForensics. When an image is examined under Error Level Analysis on these websites, altered or appended parts stand out in colour grade from the rest of the image.
While there were no evident mismatches on the BSP image, the orange portion of the BJP flag stood out on the FotoForensics test.
Similarly, the BJP flag appears glared out compared to the rest of the image's scale on Forensically as well. This can be seen below.
Thus, we concluded that the photo used of the BJP flag was a doctored one. The original photo had a BSP flag.
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