Fact Check: Congress shares 2012 image of PM Narendra Modi with ducks as PR during Covid-19

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently shared a video of himself with peacocks at his Lok Kalyan Marg residence. This was picked up by nearly every mainstream media outlet and soon attracted criticism on social media for propaganda during the ongoing pandemic.

After the peacock video surfaced, several individuals began circulating pictures of PM Modi with ducks. The Congress party shared one such picture and wrote, “..leader of the 3rd most-affected country is making PR videos instead of helping his people.”

Singer Caralisa Monteiro shared another photograph of the Prime Minister where he is surrounded by ducks. PM Modi seems to read a newspaper in the picture while several novels and a laptop lay beside him. “The talent to read two books, a newspaper and the laptop simultaneously while posing for the perfect photograph. And that poise during a Pandemic,” she wrote.

Another Twitter handle @SpiritOfCongress shared the same photograph while suggesting that it was shot during the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak.

Old photographs

Image 1

The image tweeted by Congress was found in a 2012 blog post by Sunday Guardian editorial director Madhav Das Nalapat. It dates back to 2012. Nalapat had interviewed PM Modi when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. His interview was published on Sunday Guardian and his blog post where he shared several images of PM Modi in the company of ducks.

Image 2

A duplicate of the second image, tweeted by singer Caralisa Monteiro, could not be found. However, a similar image was found in an article published on rediff.com in September 2013.

This picture also dates back to 2012. PM Modi can be spotted in the same clothes he has worn in image 1. Furthermore, there are other pictures of him on the blogpost by Madhav Das Nalapat where he can be seen reading the identical book on former US President Barack Obama.

Therefore, old photographs of Prime Minister Modi were shared on social media, including by Congress, as recent. The Times of India had earlier fact-checked one of these images and concluded that it dates back to 2013. However, the photograph, as pointed out in this fact-check, is from 2012.