Images from 2017 shared as Jan Vishwas Rally held at Gandhi Maidan in Patna

These images are of the Rashtriya Janata Dal rally held at Gandhi Maidan in Patna in August 2017. It has no link to Jan Vishwas Maha rally.

The political atmosphere across the country has been heating up recently over the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. To oust the BJP, which has ruled India for a decade, a new alliance called the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) has been formed under the leadership of the Congress to face the Lok Sabha elections this time. They organised a public rally at the historic Gandhi Maidan in Patna, Bihar on 3 March 2024. The Jan Vishwas Maha Rally was attended by a slew of top Opposition leaders. Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, party leader Rahul Gandhi, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad, former Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav etc.

Against this backdrop, a collage of two images are going viral on social media, purporting to be of the crowd gathered at the Jan Vishwas rally held in Patna. The image was uploaded and claimed to be a scene from a recent rally.

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Fact Check-

We started our investigations by running a reverse image search on Google whose results led us to the same image uploaded on 27 August, 2017 by the former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav on Twitter.

Archive Link

This confirms that the image is from 2017, not recent. Further investigation revealed that the image uploaded by Lalu Prasad Yadav on Twitter at the time was an edited photo, not the original one. He was also criticized for his work.  ANI News claims that Lalu Prasad Yadav edited the photo to show such a large crowd. 

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Several leading news agencies in the country covered the incident at the time. We received multiple reports like that. On 28 August, 2017, the Times of India used the picture to write a story about the criticism Lalu Prasad Yadav faced for using an edited image.

We also found a tweet by “The Times of India” dated August 27, 2017. A viral picture is present in this tweet and it has been described as the RJD rally held at Gandhi Maidan.  

Twitter link

So we can clearly understand that the images shared on social media linking it to the Jan Vishwas Rally held on March 3, 2024 are not related to it. These pictures of Gandhi Maidan in Patna are actually from the year 2017.

Conclusion-

Fact Crescendo found the claim made along with the viral image to be Misleading. The images shared on social media linking it to the Jan Vishwas Rally held on March 3, 2024 are not related to it. These images are of the Rashtriya Janata Dal rally held at Gandhi Maidan in Patna in August 2017