With the farmers’ protest against the new farm laws gaining momentum with each passing day, a set of images is being circulated on social media with a claim that they show a massive gathering of people in support of the agitating farmers.
However, The Quint found that all of these images are old and have no connection with the ongoing protests by farmers in and around the national capital.
CLAIM
The images shared by one Zach Carter on Twitter had over 6,400 likes at the time of filing this report. The caption with which the images were shared reads: “250 *million* people on strike in India. The revolution will not be televised.” (sic)
WHAT WE FOUND
We ran a reverse image search on the aforementioned images and found that none of them is from the ongoing protests.
Image 1
We found this image in a report dated 13 January 2020, on a website called Freely Magazine. Attributing the image to The Associated Press, the website mentioned that it is from a Trade Unions’ strike in India organised in January.
Another website called Portside also credited the image to AP photographer Ajit Solanki and mentioned that it was from the strike called by Trade Unions.
Next, we searched for photographs by Ajit Solanki on The Associated Press and found that this particular image was uploaded on 8 January 2020.
Image 2
We found the same image in a report by NDTV dated 12 March 2018. According to the report, this image is from a march organised by farmers in Maharashtra to press their demands for complete loan waiver and transfer of adivasi land to farmers who have been tilling it for years.
The image was also shared by Communist Party Of India (Marxist)’s Sitaram Yechury on Twitter in 2018.
Image 3 and Image 4
A reverse image search helped us track both these images to a nationwide shutdown called by CPI(M) members in January 2020.
According to Getty Images, both the images are from Amritsar.
Clearly, old images from January 2020 and 2018 are being shared as the ongoing farmers’ agitation against the new farm laws.
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