A photo of a road full of potholes is being shared on social media with the claim that it is from Uttar Pradesh. The claim takes a dig at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the Union government's 'Smart Cities Mission'.
It must be noted that Uttar Pradesh was adjudged the best state this year under the 'Smart Cities Mission' in the contest organised by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, followed by Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
However, we found that the photo of the road shows the condition of a national highway that is under construction in Madhya Pradesh.
CLAIM
A Twitter user shared the photo and the claim in Hindi reads, "योगी आदित्यनाथ जी को इस सड़क का नाम भी बदलकर #स्मार्ट_सड़क रख देना चाहिए कि नही आपकी राय चाहती हूँ दोस्तो."
(Translation: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath must also change the name of this road and rename it to 'Smart Road'.)
An archive of the tweet can be found here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We looked at the comments of the tweet and found one comment that said that it is from Madhya Pradesh.
Next, we ran a reverse image search and found one tweet by the National President of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) Srinivas BV who mentioned that the image was from Madhya Pradesh.
Taking keywords from his tweet we came across a news report by Hindi daily 'Dainik Bhaskar' published on 18 August 2021.
The report read that the only national highway joining Ujjain-Agra-Kota is in a pathetic condition. The 52-kilometre road from Madhya Pradesh's Ujjain to Tanoriya village in Shajapur district has around 427 potholes in the road.
It further read that the 52-km stretch is under the jurisdiction of five Member of Parliaments and two MLAs, yet the condition of the road is such.
Screenshot from Dainik Bhaskar.
(Source: Dainik Bhaskar/Screenshot)
We also got in touch with the Dainik Bhaskar reporter Kamal Chauhan who confirmed to us that the photos for the exclusive story were taken near the Ghosla bus station in Ujjain by the daily's photo journalist Ashok Malviya.
We also compared both the images and matched several elements.
Viral image (L), Dainik Bhaskar (R).
(Source: Twitter/Dainik Bhaskar/Altered by The Quint)
Clearly, a photo from Madhya Pradesh is being falsely shared as from Uttar Pradesh.
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