New Delhi: When Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu, for his second informal summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, his critics and fans were both perpetuating hoaxes on social media.
The first hoax was a video showing Modi receiving a grand welcome in Tamil Nadu — where the BJP and its ally AIADMK were all but washed out in this year’s Lok Sabha polls, even as a distinct Modi wave guided him to victory in most states.
The second involved two images, including one that sought to suggest that Modi’s beach-cleaning exercise at Mamallapuram was a fancy photo-op shot by a team of film-makers from abroad.
Both were retweeted thousands of times, and both have been proven false.
No grand welcome
The aforementioned video depicting a grand welcome for Modi shows the PM walking ahead of his cavalcade as hundreds of people, waiting on the side of the road, wave at him enthusiastically.
The video, viral on Twitter, has the Telugu song ‘Veede Veede’ playing in the background.
https://twitter.com/SwamiGeetika/status/1182914291936026625
The clip, however, is not from Tamil Nadu, but Gujarat, Modi’s home state, and dates back to December 2017, when the state last held assembly polls. It was shot when the PM visited Ahmedabad to cast his vote.
In one of the shots, Modi is clearly seen holding up his finger to show that he has voted.
The same video was shared on Facebook with the caption “Tamil Nadu shows its love for PM Modi”, by a page named ‘My First Vote For Modi’, which is run by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It was, however, deleted later.
Cleaning drive not staged
When PM Modi was spotted plogging — a Swedish-origin word for jogging while picking up litter — on Mamallapuram beach, it garnered mixed reactions on social media.
While some people hailed the PM for doing his bit to promote ‘Swachh Bharat’, others saw it as a staged photo-op.
Congress MP Karti Chidambaram was among the latter, and tweeted a set of three photos, one of which showed a foreign crew with cameras and lighting equipment. The remaining two featured Modi picking up trash.
A handle called ‘Rofl Republic’ subsequently tweeted four photos with the caption, “How PM Modi’s plogging scene was shot…”
One of these images showed four security men scanning the beach with bomb detectors. This image is actually from 11 April 2019, and was clicked in Kozhikode, Kerala, when Modi visited the city for a campaign rally.
How PM Modi's #Plogging scene was shot:
?Security scans the entire beach
?Plastic wastes are strategically placed
?Camera crew gets ready
?And the Oscar goes to… pic.twitter.com/IfPy5nK36g
— Rofl Republic (@i_theindian) October 12, 2019
One of the other images was the same shot of a foreign crew that Karti had shared earlier. This photograph, however, is from West Sands beach at St Andrews in Scotland, and was taken from a website called tayscreen.com. The imagery in the photo is enough to prove it wasn’t taken at Mamallapuram.
The misleading photos were also tweeted by Congress social media coordinator Avinash Kadbe and Supreme Court advocate and Congress Spokesperson Brijesh Kalappa.
How PM Modi's #Plogging scene was shot:
?Security scans the entire beach
?Plastic wastes are strategically placed
?Camera crew gets ready
?And the Oscar goes to… pic.twitter.com/7XNVr0OIWq
— Avinash Kadbe (@AvinashkadbeINC) October 12, 2019
This is one section of the 25 member crew that shot PM Modi cleaning the five star beach this morning. Good job guys?? pic.twitter.com/slNppVAuWW
— Brijesh Kalappa (@brijeshkalappa) October 12, 2019
In collaboration with SMHoaxslayer