Fact-Check: Neither the BJP nor RJD Flag Was Placed Atop This Pole in Tamil Nadu

The original image was of a Bahujan Samaj Party flag at a village in Uttar Pradesh.

Fact-check: The photo is shared with the claim that a BJP flag was placed on a pole in Tamil Nadu.  

(Source: Altered by The Quint)

Several Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders shared a photo, which shows four men standing on top of one another and placing the party's flag on an electric pole, claiming that it is from Tamil Nadu.

The leaders captioned the photo saying, "Lotus is blooming in Tamil Nadu."

However, we found that the image of the BJP flag is photoshopped. In the original image, the men were seen erecting a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) flag at Shahpur Kutub village in Aligarh district of Uttar Pradesh.

CLAIM

Former minister and Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) national general secretary CT Ravi shared the image on 7 June with the caption, "Lotus is blooming in Tamil Nadu."

The post had garnered over 1,000 retweets and over 9,800 likes at the time of writing this article.

An archive of the tweet can be seen here. 

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

The same image was also tweeted by several BJP leaders, including Ravinder Gupta (here) and the party's Himachal Pradesh spokesperson Prajwal Busta (here).

Both the BJP leaders had tweeted saying that the image was from Tamil Nadu.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

Meanwhile, Surajgarha MLA Prahlad Yadav shared the same photo, albeit with a different flag and a different claim: "This time, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) will come to power."

The flag carried the party's lantern symbol.

More archived links from Facebook can be seen here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

While searching on Twitter, we found a comment by a user named Rohitash Kumar, who had responded to Prahlad Yadav's tweet.

Kumar mentioned that the photo was from Shahpur Kutub village in Iglas constituency in Aligarh district and was taken in 2017, adding that the person standing on top was his nephew.

The user mentioned that the photo was from 2017.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

We then reached out to Kumar who said that the photo was taken by him.

Speaking to The Quint, he said, "I had taken this photo, and the person standing on the top is my nephew named Jitendra Kumar (Tittu)."

He shared a Facebook post from 2019 with The Quint, where one can see the blue flag. The location read "Shahpur Kutub."

The photo was posted in 2019.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

Kumar also sent us a photo of the electricity pole from the area where the flag was erected. It is still there but in a worn-out condition.

The current photo of the flag. 

(Source: Rohitash Kumar)

He also sent us the location, which confirmed that it was at Shahpur Kutub in Aligarh district.

Further, a Google reverse image search on the photo also led us to a tweet by a user named Shirisha Swaero Akinapally.

The tweet in Telugu said that the men had climbed the pole and placed the "blue flag," which is the party flag of the BSP. The tweet was also retweeted by former IPS officer and BSP convener RS Praveen Kumar.

The user had tweeted saying that a "blue flag" was placed on the pole.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

Clearly, photoshopped images of the party flags of the BJP and RJD are being shared on social media.

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