A viral collage of photos claiming to show Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Droupadi Murmu and Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde in their youth, is fake. BOOM found that the three photos are of different people and do not show the PM, President or the Maharastra CM respectively.
The photo is being shared with various captions and one such text in Hindi translates to, "It is surprising to see the four photos below and see how amazing the game of fate is. 1-Prime Minister 2-President 3-Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister 4- Maharashtra Chief Minister.
(Original text in Hindi - नीचे चार फोटो को देखकर आश्चर्य होता है कि भाग्य का खेल भी गजब है 👇 1-प्रधानमंत्री 2-राष्ट्रपति 3-उत्तर प्रदेश मुख्यमंत्री 4-महाराष्ट्र मुख्यमंत्री)
The posts contains four pictures with Kannada text on them captioning each (clockwise) as - 1. Modi 2. Murmu 3. Yogi. 4. Eknath
The photos claim to show a young PM Modi sweeping the floor, a young President Droupadi Murmu dressed in an old saree and Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde posing next to an autorickshaw.
FACT CHECK
BOOM found that while Yogi Adityanath's photo in the viral collage is true, the rest of the three images are fake and don't show young PM Modi, President Murmu or Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde.
We ran reverse image searches on each picture and here is what we found :
Photo Of Prime Minister Narendra Modi Sweeping The Floor
The photo claiming to be PM Modi sweeping the floor is an old fake which has been previously debunked by BOOM and several other fact checkers repeatedly.
BOOM in its earlier fact check had found that the image is morphed with Modi's face added to the photo of a sweeper clicked by an Associate Press (AP) photographer on June 2, 1946.
The original photo as on AP archives was clicked by Max Desfor, a Pulitzer prize winning war photographer, in 1946 and is captioned that it shows, "One of India's "untouchable" caste holds the broom he uses in sweeping out streets, yards and houses, June 2, 1946. The untouchables, or Harijans (Children of God) as they are called by Gandhi, do all of the nation's "unclean" work. Gandhi repeatedly has said the curse of oppressive British rule was a just punishment for the sin of untouchability that high-caste Hindus have practiced for many centuries."
Read our previous fact check here : The True Story Behind One Of India's Most Well Known Fakes
Photo Of President Droupadi Murmu
The photo claiming to be Droupadi Murmu shows a female worker dressed in an old saree and hairnet. We ran a reverse image search on the picture and found that it is not Murmu but a sanitation worker in a hospital in Uparbeda, where the President studied as a child.
A reverse image search on Google led us to a News18 article published on July 23, 2022, which carried the same viral photo. The article was published days after the BJP announced Droupadi Murmu as the NDA's candidate for the presidential election and spoke to Murmu's neighbours, fellow villagers and those who stay in the village - Uparbeda - where she studied.
According to the News18 story, the woman in the viral photo is "Sukumar Tudu, who works as a safai karmachari in the hospital" in Uparbeda. The article used the same photo and spoke to Tudu about the hardships she was facing in the region.
Photo Of Maharashtra CM Posing With An Autorickshaw
We found a reply to a tweet with the fake claim that said the person in the photo is Baba Kamble, founder of Maharashtra Rickshaw Panchayat and not Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde. Using this as a clue, we ran a search for Baba Kamble in Marathi script on Facebook and found the same photo uploaded by a page - Maharashtra Rickshaw Panchayat, Pune - on July 22, 2022. The page had uploaded the picture with a caption in Marathi that said it shows Kamble, the founder president of the Rickshaw Panchayat posing in front of his vehicle in 1997 at the Pimpri Raatrani rickshaw stand.
Pimpri is part of the twin cities of Pimpri-Chinchwad and part of Pune, Maharashtra.
We also found the page having posted several debunks by Marathi news channels about the same photo going viral as Eknath Shinde's picture. Shinde before entering politics, was briefly an autorickshaw driver in Thane, a district near Mumbai.
We also found a ABP Majha news story in Marathi where they spoke to Kamble about the viral photo who said, "Eknath Shinde who was once an auto driver is now the chief minsiter. This was a proud feeling for all the rickshaw drivers in the state and in the same league some drivers posted my photo on social media and it went viral as an old photo of CM Shinde. But later it was proven that this is my photo and I got several calls too about the same. I think, the confusion happened because CM Shinde has a beard like I did when I was younger."
Photo Of A Young Yogi Adityanath
BOOM found that this photo is true and shows a young Adityanath, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, has featured in several news stories about him. According to a photo feature in Amar Ujala about Adityanath's life, the photo is from 1994 and shows Adityanath after he decided to become a monk and give up his identity of Ajay Bisht.