No, BJP Workers Didn't Protest Against Canada in Front of 'Canara Bank'

The original image does not have a Canara Bank board. It dates back to 2020 and is from a BJP protest held in Ooty.

Fact-Check: The original photo does not have the Canara Bank board in the background. 

(Source: Altered by The Quint) 

(Note: This story was originally published on 28 September 2023 and is being republished following the same altered image going viral on social media again.)

An image showing several people holding Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) flags and protesting in front of Canara Bank is being shared on social media.

What is the claim?: Those sharing the image wrote that the BJP workers mistook Canara Bank to be a Canadian organisation and started protesting in front of it.

• This comes amid the ongoing diplomatic row between India and Canada.

Who shared it?: The image was shared by former cricketer and member of Lok Sabha, Kirti Azad. The post had garnered over 592.4K views at the time of writing this story.

An archive of the post can be found here. 

(Source: X/Screenshot) 

(Archives of similar claims can be found here, here, here and here.)

What is the truth?: The viral image is digitally edited to add the Canara Bank board.

• The original photo dates back to 2020 and was taken during a protest in Ooty, Tamil Nadu against the removal of a flagpole in the city.

How did we find out?: We conducted a Google reverse image and came across a report published by Tamil news website Maalaimalar where a similar image was shared on 30 August 2020.

• The story was about a protest held by the BJP workers in Ooty over removing a flagpole in the city.

Here is a preview of the report published by Maalaimalar. 

(Source: Maalaimalar/Screenshot) 

• The report noted that the party had not obtained permission to plant the flagpole as it was on Ooty's municipality land.

• We noticed that the original image had Xiaomi, a consumer electronics company's board, instead of the "Canara Bank" board.

• Next, we compared the viral image with the image in the article.

Here is a comparison between the two images. 

(Source: Altered by The Quint) 

• Additionally, we found the same image in another article on a website called Top Tamil News and this was also shared in September 2020.

Conclusion: This old image has been edited to add the Canara Bank board to take a dig at the BJP supporters. The original image has a Xiaomi board in the background and is from Ooty.

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