A seven year old morphed image showing a sea of crowd at a political rally has resurfaced on social media with false claims that it shows Patna's Gandhi Maidan where leaders of the INDIA Alliance met on March 3 as part of the Jan Vishwas Maharally.
The already debunked image by BOOM in 2017 was shared on X by a user Supriya Bharadwaj, with the caption, "Patna's Gandhi Maidan. Tejashwi Yadav Ji had said that the Game is still on. And today we saw the first glimpse of the game. All the leaders of INDIA Alliance are reaching." (Original text in Hindi: … पटना का गांधी मैदान … @yadavtejashwi जी ने कहा था “खेला अभी बाक़ी है” … और आज उस खेल की पहली झलक दिख गई है … अभूतपूर्व !!! #INDIA गठबंधन के सभी वरिष्ठ नेता पहुँच रहे है)
Click here for an archive of the image.
The Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD) hosted the Jan Vishwas Maha Rally on March 3, which saw the presence of Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, Uttar Pradesh's chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, and CPI (M)'s Sitaram Yechury.
The image was also shared by a Congress leader from Madhya Pradesh, Ramniwas Rawat, with the same claim.
The photograph is circulating as a recent visual from the Jan Vishwas Maha Rally on X and Meta.
Morphed image is from 2017
BOOM ran a reverse image search on the photograph and was directed to a tweet by Lalu Prasad Yadav, former chief minister of Bihar. Yadav shared the same morphed image on X (erstwhile Twitter) with the caption, "No "Face" will stand in front of Lalu's "Base". Come & Count as much as u can in Gandhi Maidan, Patna #DeshBachao."
Several handles including Bharatiya Janata Party's Shandilya Giriraj Singh and Kapil Mishra called out Lalu Prasad Yadav for tweeting a Photoshopped image to show a massive turnout at a rally.
We also found an X post by news agency ANI which showed a sparsely crowded ground.
Additionally, we found the original image on Facebook, that was shared by a user named Shamsheer Ahmed. Ahmed posted a series of images as part of the RJD Desh Bachao BJP Bhagao rally.