Edited Photo of Delhi Government Ad on Gandhi Jayanti Goes Viral

Fact-Check | An edited photograph was share to claim that a Delhi government ad had CM Arvind Kejriwal's photo at the centre of the ad on Gandhi Jayanti.

(Photo: The Quint)

The screenshot of a newspaper advertisement by Delhi's Aam Aadmi Party government on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti has been edited and shared by several people on social media.

The edited photograph has an enlarged photograph of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the centre of the advertisement and small image of Mahatma Gandhi on the right corner.

However, we found that the original advertisement had a large photograph of Gandhi in the centre, while a smaller picture of Kejriwal occupied the bottom right area.

CLAIM

Sharing the edited photograph on Facebook, a page with over 2.5 lakh followers called Troll Indian Politics said, "Not sure if it is Gandhi Jayanti or Kejriwal Jayanti".

The vice president of Delhi Congress, Ali Mehdi, also shared the photo in a tweet.

The viral photograph carried the famous quote by Gandhi in Hindi, "Be the change you want to see in the world".

An archive of the post can be found here.

Similar captions were shared by many other users on Facebook and Twitter, archives of which can be found here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

The viral photograph was taken from Hindi newspaper Dainik Jagran, as was seen on the top right corner. We checked the e-paper version of the paper for 2 October and found the original advertisement.

A comparison of the two can be seen below.

Archive of the post from Dainik Jagran can be found here.

In the original advertisement, the photograph of Mahatma Gandhi was at the centre in a much larger size and a smaller image of Kejriwal was at the bottom right corner.

The image of Kejriwal used in the viral photograph is stock photograph which has previously been used by the party to talk about various initiatives and projects.

We also found an English version of the advertisement that was published in English language newspapers such as The Hindu, The Times of India, etc. That, too, had the image of Mahatma Gandhi at the centre.

The english version of the ad in The Hindu. 

Evidently, the photograph of an advertisement by Delhi government on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti was edited to create a misleading narrative.

(With inputs from SM Hoax Slayer.)

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