Congress circulates old photo of dirty Ganga to target Narendra Modi 

The photo circulated by the Congress.

The Congress circulated an old photo of a dirty and polluted part of the Ganga river and targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government for displaying an apathetic attitude towards cleaning the river. This comes in the wake of the death of Ganga activist GD Agarwal. Agarwal died after fasting for 111 days demanding concrete steps from the government to save the river.

On Friday, the official Twitter handle of the Congress tweeted in Hindi, which roughly translated reads: “The self-proclaimed son of Maa Ganga has turned his face away from cleaning the Ganga as soon as he assumed office as the prime minister. All projects related to Maa ganga have died, but the fraud son’s sloganeering continues. #MaaGangaSeDhokha (Fraud on Maa Ganga).”

प्रधानमंत्री की कुर्सी हाथ आते ही माँ गंगा के स्व-घोषित बेटे ने गंगा सफाई से मुँह मोड़ लिया। माँ गंगा से जुड़ी परियोजनाओं ने दम तोड़ दिया और जुमलेबाज बेटे की धोखेबाजी अभी भी लगातार जारी है।#MaaGangaSeDhoka pic.twitter.com/6cdCGrRIug

— Congress (@INCIndia) October 12, 2018

Truth behind the photo

Using the date and time filter on Google, Alt News came across to a Romanian website, which had posted this image in 2009 and 2010. A link related to Getty Images was founded. According to Getty Images, the image which was posted by the Congress party, is actually an image photographed by Prakash Singh, who claims that it was clicked at Varanasi on April 5, 2009.

(For more details about the photo, please check the Alt News story on this.)

As some key state assembly elections and the Lok Sabha election are approaching, both sides of the political spectrum are indulging in spreading misinformation and fake news with the objective to malign their rival parties. We can only expect this to increase in the coming days.