Ahead of elections in West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Puducherry, many social media users are sharing an image of Home Minister Amit Shah sitting on a sofa adjacent to AIMIM leader, Asaduddin Owaisi. The image is being shared to insinuate that AIMIM is the B team of BJP.
An old image of Amit Shah greeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi is doing the rounds on social media with a false narrative, terming it as a ‘secret pact’ between Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) ahead of West Bengal Assembly Poll 2021. The edited image shows Home Minister Amit Shah showing gratitude to AIMIM chief, Asauddin Owaisi.
A Twitter user Samiullah Kinnu Khan shared the image with the caption, “What elegance, dear what elegance. Another of the Twitter user, Mohammed Ahmed, commented on the viral picture, with the original picture. In the original picture, one can see Amit Shah with Punjab’s Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh. If compared, the sofa in the viral picture is the same as the sofa on which Amit Shah is sitting in the original photo, one can see the same colour sofa and the same plants in the backdrop as seen in the viral picture. And on December 2, 2020, it was confirmed that ‘Amit Shah met Amarinder Singh’ to discuss the farmers’ agitation in Punjab.
Doing a reverse image research, it was found that, on February 28, 2018. Owaisi had asked the Telangana government to construct three bridges across the River Musi to help hawkers and street vendors, he could be seen the same exact dress in that image as the viral. Although, on January 3, Owaisi met with Abbas Siddiqui, a South Bengal based influential religio-political cleric who is predicted to float his party in the upcoming elections and the incident has become a part of discussion in political spectrum in past few weeks. The post has been captioned in Bangla that reads, “Amit Shah pleaded by holding Asaduddin’s hands and said ‘like Bihar give us Bengal too, I will offer the cash whatever it requires.”
Thus, the viral image is morphed and is confusing people as the claims are simply misleading.
