The menace of fake news is refusing to die down. And with the flourishing social media, the reach of these fake news is increasing exorbitantly. Most of us at some point of time might have come across with WhatsApp forward claiming to be ‘important news’. At times, without even checking the validity of the news we end up forwarding these ‘news’. Often we underestimate the disastrous effects, forwarding these fake messages have. There have been scores of incidents this year alone when such forwards have caused mob violence leading to the death of innocent people.
In the past few days too such incorrect pieces of information have made their way to social media. Here, The Logical Indian aims at busting a few of them.
Fake opinion poll by BBC predicting BJP’s win
Out of the five poll-bounded states, three states, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram have concluded their assembly elections. The two states that are yet to go to the polls are Rajasthan and Telangana. With the assembly elections approaching in Rajasthan, an alleged opinion poll claiming to be conducted by British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) of Rajasthan elections has gone viral on the internet. Many social media users have shared the BBC homepage along with the alleged opinion poll.
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The purported Rajasthan election result ‘poll’ has predicted the number of seats both BJP and Congress, would win in the forthcoming election. It has shown that in the month of June the Congress had 160+ seats and BJP had 30 seats. However, the numbers for the month of November predicts a win for BJP in the Rajasthan with 135 seats. The opinion ‘poll’ also predicts that if this (increase in number) will continue with the same rate, on December 11, Congress will end up with 50 seats and BJP with 145+ seats.’ The alleged poll went viral on all social media including Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp that forecasted a win for the BJP against the Congress in the upcoming December Rajasthan elections.
Turns out that the whole opinion poll claimed to be conducted by BBC, was fake. The Alt news spoke to the BBC spokesperson, who informed that the alleged poll is a fake. The spokesperson said that the news organisation did no such poll. The spokesperson further stated that the news organisation does not come up come up with pre-election surveys in India. While speaking to the publication the spokesperson said, ‘This fake survey on the Rajasthan polls has been circulating on WhatsApp and social media, with some messages claiming it to be from BBC News. We’d like to make absolutely clear that it is fake and does not come from the BBC.’ said the spokesperson. However, if you want to check the exit polls for Rajasthan elections, here are a few genuine opinion surveys that have been conducted by ABP News-CVoter, C fore and Times Now in association with CNX. All of these surveys predicted a win for the Congress.
Cracks in Statue of Unity?
The second viral news on the list is about the Statue Of Unity. Eight years after the proposal, PM Modi on October 31 unveiled the Statue Of Unity. The world’s tallest statue at 182-meters is built to pay tribute to India’s first Home Minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Soon after that, the social media got flooded with close up pictures of the Statue of Unity. Some of these pictures with blue markings on it highlighted some parts of the statue, which came up in November itself showed that the statue developed cracks in just two weeks of its inauguration. One of the users circulated the pictures with a caption, ‘After successfully damaged 2000 notes within 2 years Sardar Statue cracking in 2 weeks.’
Courtesy: Alt News
As reported by Alt News, reacting on these claims, IK Patel, the CEO of Statue of Unity, told the Gujarati daily Divya Bhaskar, that the claims that there are cracks in the statue are fake and is just mere rumour-mongering. He said that the Statue Of Unity consists of thousands of metal plates that are made out of a bronze alloy and that have been welded together. He further stated that the to weld those huge pieces a particular type of welding has been used, which gives the illusion of these cracks. Several videos are available online that have a closer view of the statue. In which it can be seen that the humongous Statue of Unity is made by arranging many individual blocks.
Here are some pictures from the official website of Statue of Unity posted during its construction.
So, the claims of the white markings that can be seen on the statue being cracks are false. Recently, another fake news was going on, in which a picture was circulated on the i…
