The second wave of COVID-19 has brought India to its knees. The daily surge in the COVID-19 cases has forced the political parties to cancel their rallies in the states going to the polls. However, a post of Amit Shah addressing three rallies in West Bengal on April 22 in the current scenario has brought social media to a frenzy.
What is the post?
A Facebook user on the evening of April 21 uploaded a post of a tweet from the official Twitter handle of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) where it was stated that Amit Shah will be addressing three public rallies in West Bengal on April 22. The tweet says that Amit Shah will address the first rally at Harirampur at 12 pm, then the next at Gazole at 1.30 pm, and the final one at Durgapur Purba at 3.45 pm. The tweet also shares four links where people can watch the rally live.
The links are:
facebook.com/BJP4India
twitter.com/BJP4India
youtube.com/BJP4India
bjplive.org
Headline8 did the fact check of the post and here is what we found out:
Investigation:
Our team at Headline8 went through the official Twitter handle of BJP- @BJP4India and BJP West Bengal- @BJP4Bengal. We could not find any tweets relating to any rallies by Amit Shah on the given day. All we could find was a video of a rally by Amit Shah in the state on April 18.
Also, we checked the links for further verification. The links redirected us to the official Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and website handle of BJP respectively.
In addition, our team at Headline8 spoke over the phone to a high-ranking member of the BJP. We spoke to him on the matter and he said, “In light of the increasing COVID-19 cases in the country, the central committee of the party has cancelled all election rallies in the poll-bound states. The news of Amit Shah addressing three rallies in West Bengal on April 22 is false.
In the last stage of our investigation, we went through the Facebook account that uploaded the post. The Facebook account belongs to one Sheeladitya Dutta hailing from Guwahati, Assam. He currently has 1151 friends on his account. He is often known for uploading anti-government posts.
Here is the archived link of the post:
Conclusion:
Amit Shah is not addressing three rallies in West Bengal on April 22. The post is a doctored one and is not at all authentic.