Authors
Social media users shared an image with a caption that reads, “Protesting farmers take off the National Flag and put their own flag at the protest site.”
The image in context shows a man putting a flag at the top of a building, while the Indian tricolour flag hangs near his feet. You can see the image below.
Gaining 2.1K likes and over 700 retweets, one user tweeted the image and caption on India’s Republic Day, 26 January 2021. The day a historic farmers tractor parade took place in Delhi.
The archived version of this claim can be seen here.
You can see another example below and its archived version here.
This claim is one among many shared on social media platforms since the farmers tractor parade on 26 January, which are misleading or their context misplaced. Some of these false claims include farmers hoisting the Khalistan flag and removing the Indian national flag at the Red Fort.
On Tuesday, farmers covered around 100 km of the national capital on their tractors, continuing their protests against the three ordinance farm bills introduced by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre.
Fact Check/ Verification
A Google reverse image search led us to multiple social media posts which included the image in context.
But the point to note here is that these posts date back to 2013 and 2014.
The below image showing a man putting a BJP flag, while the Indian national flag is down has been online since at least 2013.
As noted, the flag being put in the image is that of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). BJP’s flag is green and orange with a lotus drawn in black.
More older posts which include the image in context can be seen below.
Please note that we were unable to track the original source of this image.
Conclusion
Evidently, the claim is misleading since the image in context has been online since at least 2013 and therefore, not related to the ongoing farmers’ protest or the tractor parade on Republic Day.
Result: Misplaced Context
Our Sources
2013 Twitter post: https://twitter.com/Yr_Conscience/status/411835612182757376
2014 Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1439474656289892&id=1413514612219230
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