A photo of a queue of buses in India has been shared thousands of times on Facebook and Twitter alongside a claim they were organised by a leading opposition politician to transport migrant workers who were left stranded after a nationwide coronavirus lockdown.
The post’s Hindi caption translates as: “Shameful! This is not a traffic jam. Priyanka Gandhi has arranged 1000 buses to take labourers to their homes but Yogiji is not giving permission !!”, Priyanka Gandhi is a prominent politician and the current general secretary of the\xa0Indian National Congress (INC), India’s main opposition political party., Yogiji refers to Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and a leading figure in India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party., In late May 2020, Gandhi was eventually forced to\xa0recall\xa0hundreds of buses that her party had\xa0sent to\xa0Uttar Pradesh\xa0to provide transport for stranded migrant workers after they were blocked at the border.\xa0The development was reported\xa0here\xa0by Indian television channel NDTV\xa0and here\xa0by Indian newspaper the Hindustan Times on May 20., The photo was also shared alongside a similar claim\xa0on Facebook here, here, here and here; and on Twitter here, here, here and here., The claim is false., A reverse Google image search found that the photo was published by ANI, an Indian news agency, on Twitter here on February 28, 2019, more than one\xa0year before Gandhi’s attempt to transport migrants., ANI reported that the photo shows a queue of over 500 buses in Uttar Pradesh that was organised during Kumbh Mela, a major Hindu festival, and that set a world record for the longest fleet of buses., Prayagraj: Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (UPSRTC) attempts Guinness Book of World Records for the longest fleet of 500 buses. The buses with the Kumbh logo will cover a stretch of 3.2 km in the district. #Kumbh2019 pic.twitter.com/zLpCJeeOsO, The photo was also published with credit to ANI in several other Indian media reports on February 28, 2019, for example here by\xa0Financial Express and here by NDTV., Uttar Pradesh’s world record for the “largest parade of buses” is recognised by the Guinness World Records here., The INC also refuted the claim about the photo., “This is true that we have sought permission from the state government to run a thousand buses, but this photo has nothing to do with our efforts to arrange buses for migrant workers,” Mohit Pandey, the INC’s head of social media in Uttar Pradesh, told AFP by phone on May 19, 2020., , , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
This photo has circulated in reports about buses organised for a Hindu festival in February 2019 | AFP Fact Check