A Short Fact-check Clip That Explains it All

While addressing a crowd in poll-bound Assam today, PM Modi came down heavily on Congress for inaccurately sharing pictures of Taiwan and Sri Lanka, claiming it to be Assam tea garden.

‘It is injustice and insult to our beautiful Assam’ the PM proclaimed while speaking to the crowd in Chabua, adding that Congress has lost touch with Assam by virtue of its false allegations.

Earlier in March, two photos of the tea garden triggered a huge controversy in Assam. The state’s Finance Minister and BJP leader, Himanta Biswa Sarma fact-checked that the photos from Taiwan were being used by the Congress on its Assam campaign page.

Sharing a screenshot of one of the photos on Twitter, Sarma said that the official Congress campaign page was using a photo of a tea garden from Taiwan to say ‘Assam Bachao’.

He also shared the second picture in a separate tweet and questioned Congress’s ability to recognize Assam and its people.

The BJP’s claims were rubbished by Congress leader Bobeeta Sarma as election propaganda who said that the saffron party, bereft of any issue to sell to the people of Assam after their series of promises was resorting to propaganda against the national party.

However, on Thursday Congress once under came under the radar when it was accused of allegedly passing off an image from Sri Lanka as that of Assam.

In a scathing attack on Congress, Himanta Biswa Sarma stated that the official Congress Twitter handle had shared a picture from Sri Lanka announcing the two-day visit of ex-Congress president Rahul Gandhi in Assam.

To buttress his claim, Sarma shared a screenshot from Adobe Stock which showed a similar image to the one used by Congress titled ‘Tea plantations and factory in Sri Lanka’.

However, this is not the first time that Himanta Sarma had fact-checked posts put out by Congress, earlier the BJP leader had labeled the national party as a “fake news factory” for using a video of a mock drill in Jharkhand to call it shooting by the Assam police.

The focus of the BJP and Congress for this upcoming assembly elections has been to secure the votes of the tea garden workers. In about one-third of the 126 Assam segments, the votes of the tea garden workers will determine the future of the poll candidates. To secure this vote bank, both BJP and Congress have doled out money to the workers and took up other welfare initiatives for them.