Did Rahul Gandhi Win A Recent Poll Against PM Modi And Other Indian Leaders? No, Viral Graphic Is From 2017!

An image showing a news segment where leaders in Indian politics are being compared in terms of their popularity is going viral across social media. The image is viral in the context of the ongoing polls between Congress leaders as the president of the party and the Bharat Jodo Yatra, witnessing participation from Rahul Gandhi.

Claim:

In the viral image, profiles of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal can be seen. Along with their profiles, figures indicating their popularity can be seen as well.

The logo of the Times Now channel can be seen along with the graphic.

As per the graphic, Rahul Gandhi leads the purported race in popularity at 66 per cent. Narendra Modi is at number two with 15%, followed by Mamata Banerjee at 7%. Akhilesh Yadav and Arvind Kejriwal lag at 5% and 4%, respectively.

India Against Hate, a Twitter handle, also tweeted the viral image.

The image is viral across Twitter and Facebook.

Fact Check:

The Logical Indian fact-check team verified the claim and found it to be misleading. Viral graphic dates back to the 2017 assembly elections held in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.

We conducted a reverse image search on the viral image and came across this Times of India report published on December 19, 2017. The footage from the Times Now news segment is attached to this report.

The news segment and the TOI report are from the assembly elections held in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh in the year 2017. The report talks about Rahul Gandhi's campaign tours in Gujarat and his visit to several religious places in the state. The anchor of the news segment explains that the graphic is regarding the highest number of conversations about political leaders across social media.

In this case, Rahul Gandhi was the most talked about leader on social media, followed by 15 per cent of netizens talking about PM Modi on social media.

Political leaders such as Vijay Rupani, the former Gujarat Chief Minister, Hardik Patel, and Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani can also be seen in another graphic.

In the 2017 assembly elections in Gujarat, the BJP had secured 99 seats, while Congress seized 77 seats, as per this Indian Express article. In the Himachal Pradesh assembly elections, the BJP won 44 seats, whereas the Congress secured 21 seats, as per this India Today article.

We also came across the YouTube video of the news segment by Times of India published on December 18, 2017. In the video report, the anchors of Times Now are discussing the 2017 assembly elections.

Here we have compared the viral graphic against the Times Now report. The missing context of the graphic can be seen in the report.

Conclusion:

In our Fact Check, The Logical Indian found that the graphic dates back to the 2017 assembly elections held in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. The graphic shows a poll of sentiments during the elections, pitting several political leaders against each other. Thus, we can ascertain that the viral graphic is not from the recent context.

If you have any news that you believe needs to be fact-checked, please email us at factcheck@thelogicalindian.com or WhatsApp at 6364000343.

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