These photos show an Indian regional party leader meeting UN officials in Geneva in August 2016
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on November 23, 2020 at 08:55
- 3 min read
- By AFP India
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The images were published on Facebook here on November 1, 2020.
The post’s Hindi-language caption translates to English as: “Enough with the talks of ninth-failed, you monkeys. Tejaswi Yadav was awarded as the youngest politician in London at the age when your father was selling tea. Hope you would like to die out of shame now.”
Tejashwi Yadav is a politician of regional party Rashtriya Janata Dal and leader of opposition in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.
“Your father” refers to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has at many occasions said to have sold tea in his childhood.
The photo was shared in the wake of a remark by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician Sushil Kumar Modi about Yadav’s educational background during the recently concluded state assembly polls in Bihar.
The image was also shared here, here, here and here on Facebook; and here, here, here and here on Twitter, alongside an identical claim.
The claim is false.
The words “United Nations” can be seen written in English and French on top of the building seen in the bottom right-hand image shared in the misleading Facebook post.
The building seen in the background of Yadav’s photo is the UN headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, as seen in this AFP photo.
Below is a screenshot comparison of a photo shared in the misleading Facebook post (L) and the AFP photo of the UN headquarters in Geneva (R):
A reverse image search on Google found the bottom-left photo in the misleading post was published by Hindi-language newspaper Prabhat Khabar in this report about Yadav’s visit to the UN headquarters in Geneva on August 17, 2016.
“Tejaswi held a meeting with the UN Economic Commission director in Geneva,” the headline reads.
A further search found that the politician also tweeted four photos of his visit here on August 17, 2016.
Had fruitful meeting with UNECE & IRF at United Nations HQs in Geneva. pic.twitter.com/3hGva2Ab6Y
— Tejashwi Yadav (@yadavtejashwi) August 17, 2016
Yadav served as deputy chief minister of Bihar from November 2015 to July 2017.
In the first photo in his tweet, he can be seen seated with a woman and two men, who are also seen accompanying him in the top photo shared in the misleading Facebook post.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the photo in the misleading post (L) and the photo tweeted by Yadav (R), with respective people marked with respective numbers in red:
Multiple keyword searches found there is no such award for “the youngest politician in London”.
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