Old Pic of Yogi Adityanath & Akhilesh Yadav Shared With False Claims on MP Polls

The photo dates back to 2017, when Adityanath and Yadav met during an event by India Today.

An old photo is being shared with the false claim that UP CM Adityanath 'betrayed' the BJP.

(Source: YouTube/Altered by The Quint)

A video, which claims that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was photographed with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is being shared on social media.

The claim: The video claims that Yogi Adityanath has 'betrayed' the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by joining forces with Yadav in the 2023 Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections.

• It adds that the news came to light after the two were recently seen together in Madhya Pradesh.

An archive of this post can be seen here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

(Archives of other posts sharing this claim can be seen here and here.)

But...?: The claim has no basis in fact.

• The photograph in question dates back to May 2017, when Yogi Adityanath and Akhilesh Yadav ran into each other at an event by the India Today group and shook hands.

How did we find out?: We looked for news reports related to claim by using both leaders' names as keywords.

The results did not return any news of Yogi Adityanath colluding with SP's Akhilesh Yadav for elections.

• The most recent report about both was one by India Today, which mentioned that Akhilesh Yadav took a dig at Adityanath in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

• In his post, Yadav referred to the 41 workers – of which eight are from Uttar Pradesh – trapped in Uttarakhand's Silkyara tunnel collapse, saying that the UP chief minister should focus on their rescue instead of campaigning for the BJP in Madhya Pradesh.

• We also came across several posts on Yogi Adityanath's official X account which show him actively campaigning for the BJP in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

What about the photo?: The claim refers to a photograph of Yadav and Yogi shaking hands.

• We ran a reverse image search on a screenshot of the video's thumbnail.

• This led us to a Facebook post on India Today's verified page, shared on 5 May 2017, which showed visuals of leaders shaking hands while they were surrounded by people.

A video of the leaders' meeting was shared in 2017.

(Source: Facebook/Altered by The Quint)

• The video was shared with the hashtag 'Panchayat UP', which was an event by the India Today group held in Noida, Uttar Pradesh.

• We also found the image in a 2017 article by Daily Mail, confirming that the photograph is old.

Conclusion: An old photograph is being used to claim that UP CM Yogi Adityanath and SP leader Akhilesh Yadav had come together to campaign for the 2023 Assembly elections.

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