By Swasti Chatterjee
An old photo of a poster featuring Nitish Kumar and text reading 'Nitish Sabke Hai' (Nitish belongs to everyone ) is circulating online as recent after the Janata Dal leader broke off his alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Bihar and stepped down as chief minister.
On August 9, 2022 Kumar ended his alliance with the BJP, resigned as the coalition chief minister and returned to the 'Grand Alliance' or Mahagathbandhan with RJD leader and former deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav. The duo will again be sworn in on August 10 as the CM and deputy CM respectively.
Meanwhile the BJP has accused Kumar of being a 'habitual betrayer' for splitting from the party second time in nine years. The photograph of the poster has surfaced in this context and is being circulated with claims that it is a recent one put up outside the JD(U) office.
ANI puts corrigendum for sharing photo of the poster as recent; deletes it later
Wire agencyANI shared the image of the poster and claimed that it appeared at the JD(U) headquarters in Patna as Kumar formed an alliance with RJD after splitting from the NDA coalition. The text of the tweet read, "#BiharPolitical | "Nitish Sabke Hai" poster appears at the JD(U) HQs in Patna as Nitish Kumar forms an alliance with RJD after leaving NDA"
The same was picked up by several news outlets with claims that the photo was recent. ANI took down the tweet later after it was pointed out that the photograph is old and not related to the recent split between the JD(U) and NDA. The news agency thenissued a corrigendum stating that they erroneously posted an old picture. The corrigendum was however deleted later.
NDTV and other media outlets fall for the image
Several news outlets including NDTV, ETV Bharat, OTV bulletin , The Times Of India , Republic Bharat , ABP News, TV9 Hindi , News 18, Prabhat Khabar India also shared the photograph as a recent development outside the JD(U) office after Kumar's resignation.
Chitra Tripathi, editor and anchor of news channel Aajtak shared the image of the poster taking a dig at Kumar splitting from the NDA and forming a government with the opposition. Journalists including Sweta Singh from Aaj Tak, ABP News anchor Manogya Loiwal , Zee Hindustan journalist Mohd Maqusood Khan also tweeted the photo as recent. More tweets can be seen here.
Fact Check
BOOM performed a reverse image search on the photograph and was able to trace it back to a tweet by journalist Narendra Nath Mishra from October 7, 2020.
The same image was found in aBBC Marathi article published on November 10, 2020. According to the article, such posters of Nitish Kumar were put up during the Bihar Assembly elections. The Bihar Assembly elections were held in 2020, which formed the JD(U) and BJP alliance and the coalition government.
We then ran a keyword search on Google, limiting the time frame between January 2020 and December 2020. We found a similar image of Nitish Kumar's poster outside the JDU office in a TV9 Bharatvarsh article from October 7, 2020. The same image was published on a Live Hindustan article from October, 2020.
