A newspaper clip purportedly of a Bengal Daily Bartaman is being shared on social media amid the ongoing West Bengal elections. The title of the newspaper clip says, “Give me 42 seats & I’ll show you how to make the Hindus cry: Mamata”. A Facebook user Sanjib Samanta shared the newspaper clipping with no caption.
The same claim was viral in 2019 and has now resurfaced amid the ongoing Assembly elections in the state. The newspaper clipping was photoshopped and certain words in the headline were replaced with new ones. The original newspaper article, which was published on 20 April 2019, had a different headline from the one in the viral image.
Netizens shared this image several times on Facebook and Twitter. The same clipping was shared with a similar claim on Twitter back in 2019. A user had written, “If India does not wake up to this grave situation, we will have another Islamic state on our border.” After a reverse image search of the viral photo a post was found, by a Facebook user, which carried a different headline than that in the viral photo. The headline in Bengali said, “Give us 42 seats and we will show you how to shake up Delhi: Mamata”. In the viral image, the Bengali word for Delhi is removed and has been replaced with word for Hindu. Similarly, the work for ‘shake up’ is replaced with the word for ‘cry’ in Bengali. Meanwhile, the original article said that Mamata Banerjee in her speech during Lok Sabha elections for TMC candidate Apurba Sarkar in Berhampur in April 2019 had said that she will shake Delhi if she gets 42 out of 42 seats in Lok Sabha elections.
Hence, the viral image is morphed from Bengal Daily, Bartamaan and has been revived during the West Bengal state assembly elections.
