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A collage of four images is viral on social media with false claims that they are activities that took place behind the scenes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent video of cleaning the Mamallapuram beach in Tamil Nadu.
In the three out of four images, crew members can be seen scanning the beach, unloading wastes and readying the camera off the shore respectively. In the fourth image, Modi can be seen plogging on the Mamallapuram beach.
The three images are being shared to claim that the prime minister’s team had strategically placed waste, scanned the area and an entire crew of camera was ready to film the cleaning drive.
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The collage of images was also posted by Karti Chidambaram, a Congress MP.
Narendra Modi and Chinese president Xi Jinping were in the coastal town of Mamallapuram earlier this week to kickstart Jinping’s two-day India visit. PM Modi shared a three-minute long video of him picking up litter from the Mamallapuram beach during his morning jogging session on Friday. Plogging, which combines jogging with picking up litter, originated in Sweden.
The collage of images is viral on multiple Facebook pages and Twitter handles with the same narrative.
Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search and found that two out of the three images are old and unrelated.
Image 1
The first image, where an entire filming crew can be seen, is originally from West Sands Beach, St Andrews, Scotland. It is part of the Fife Tayside region, which is a popular shooting location of Holywood films.
Image 2
The second image of a bomb squad scanning a beach for landmines is originally from Kozhikode, Kerala. The photo was taken in April this year, during Narendra Modi’s election campaign in the area. The image was used in the Hindu’s report titled “BJP gears up for a show of strength ahead of Modi visit.
BOOM could not independently verify the third image.