Owaisi's Poster Defaced During His UP Visit? No, Image is From 2019

Owaisi's poster was defaced in Jharkhand in 2019 and is now being shared with a claim that it happened in UP.

The photo is from 2019 when Asaduddin Owaisi had gone to attend an election rally in Ranchi, Jharkhand. 

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A photo is doing the rounds on social media, where a man can be seen defacing a poster featuring All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi. The photo is being shared with a claim that this happened while Owaisi was in Uttar Pradesh ahead of the Assembly polls, which are scheduled to be held in 2022.

However, we found that the photo is from 2019 when Owaisi had addressed an election rally at Bariatu Maidan in Ranchi, Jharkhand, where the AIMIM party made its electoral debut in the state that went for polls that year.

CLAIM

The claim in the photo says that in Uttar Pradesh, only the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will come to power, as the man can be seen smearing black ink on Owaisi's poster.

An archived version of the tweet can be found here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

Several social media users shared the same claim and the archived versions can be found here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

Upon conducting a reverse image search on Google, we found a news article by Dainik Jagran.

The article, published on 24 September 2019, mentioned that Owaisi had reached the Bariatu Maidan in Ranchi to address a meeting and someone had smeared black ink on his poster.

The report mentioned that this angered AIMIM supporters and the police later cleared the black ink from the poster.

Photo in Dainik Jagran in 2019.

(Source: Dainik Jagran)

Next, on a closer look at the image, we found that the image that is now being circulated in the context of the UP polls, has been taken as a screengrab from Dainik Jagran, as the logo of the newspaper is visible in the viral image.

The logo of Dainik Jagran is visible in the viral image.

(Source: Facebook/Dainik Jagran/Screenshot)

We then found a news report by India Today that had also reported on the incident. We also found a video of the incident reported by news channel AajTak and found the video on YouTube on BiharTak, published on 25 September 2019.

Clearly, a photo of miscreants painting black the face of Owaisi in a poster is being shared now ahead of the UP polls.

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