Authors
A self-taught social media maverick, Saurabh realised the power of social media early on and began following and analysing false narratives and ‘fake news’ even before he entered the field of fact-checking professionally. He is fascinated with the visual medium, technology and politics, and at Newschecker, where he leads social media strategy, he is a jack of all trades. With a burning desire to uncover the truth behind events that capture people's minds and make sense of the facts in the noisy world of social media, he fact checks misinformation in Hindi and English at Newschecker.
Vice Chairperson of Congress’ Uttar Pradesh Social Media Committee Pankhuri Pathak shared two pictures of a man wearing a helmet and sitting over potholes. Pathak, while sharing these images, claimed that roads in Uttar Pradesh have become potholes, but this gentleman is still following the rules by wearing a helmet.
An archived version of her tweet can be seen here.
Fact Check/ Verification
The ‘Heart’ of the ‘Hindi Heartland’, Uttar Pradesh, is known as a developing state where basic infrastructure is still a major issue among others. Pankhuri Pathak took to Twitter to target the ruling BJP for potholes in the state. Pankhuri shared two images that allegedly depict the poor condition of roads in Uttar Pradesh. Pankhuri is a vocal critic of the Yogi Adityanath led BJP government in the state. Her tweet was flagged to us for verification.
In a bid to verify the information shared by the social media maven of the UP Congress, we performed a reverse image search using one of the two images shared by Pankhuri Pathak. After analyzing the search results, we found that the same images are viral with different claims. Many users have used another picture of the same incident where the guy who is wearing the helmet can be seen lying on the road. Some of these claims can be seen below.
We reverse searched the other image as well but we did not find anything to corroborate. Now, with the help of our regional fact-checkers, we found that these viral images belong to West Bengal.
In order to get more information on the viral images, we performed multiple google searches with the combination of different keywords in Bengali. We found multiple Facebook posts by user Deb Jani that confirm the whereabouts of these images to be someplace in West Bengal.
In one of the aforementioned Facebook posts, a hoarding of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee can be seen.
Also, there are several other details in the above-mentioned image that confirm that the images of potholes in the road belong to West Bengal and not Uttar Pradesh. kne of the hoardings in the image read ‘Captain 600’ and when we Googled the same word, we found that Captain 600 EQR is a producer of steel bars and Captain Steel India Ltd is a part of the Captain Steel conglomerate that has interests in Steel, Ferro Alloys, Coking Coal, International Trading and Finance.
Furthermore, the company website also informs us that the company is located at Kalyaneswari near Asansol, West Bengal.
Conclusion
Hence, we can conclude that the claim made by Vice Chairperson of Congress’ Uttar Pradesh Social Media Committee Pankhuri Pathak and several other users is ‘Misleading’. Though our research for more information on the viral picture is still ongoing, we will update our article as soon as we get some authentic information on the whereabouts of the other images.
Result: Misleading
Our Sources
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2181368168827131&set=a.1385038978460058&type=3
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2181368108827137&set=a.1385038978460058&type=3
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.phpfbid=2181368082160473&set=pb.100008619074431.-2207520000..&type=3
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Authors
A self-taught social media maverick, Saurabh realised the power of social media early on and began following and analysing false narratives and ‘fake news’ even before he entered the field of fact-checking professionally. He is fascinated with the visual medium, technology and politics, and at Newschecker, where he leads social media strategy, he is a jack of all trades. With a burning desire to uncover the truth behind events that capture people's minds and make sense of the facts in the noisy world of social media, he fact checks misinformation in Hindi and English at Newschecker.
