BJP Leaders Share 2016 Photos As Recent Images From Government Schools in Uttar Pradesh

On social media, a sequence of images of exceptionally well-kept school grounds has gone viral.

Insinuating that the Yogi Adityanath-led administration has improved the state-run schools, several social media users, including BJP politicians, have shared the images with the claim that they depict current images of a government-run school in Uttar Pradesh's Sambhal area. The images, however, are not recent. We discovered that the images, which depict a government school in Itayla Mafi in Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh, were posted for the first time in October 2016—roughly five months before Adityanath initially took office as chief minister of the state.

We also discovered that Kapil Malik, the headmaster, spent his own money renovating the school over the course of three and a half years.

Claim:

The photographs were shared to claim that they were recent ones of a state-run school in Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh.

BJP UP media panellist Prashant Umrao, who in the past has also shared fake news, shared the photos with the caption,"उत्तर प्रदेश के सरकारी प्राइमरी स्कूल।"

[English Translation: Government Primary Schools of Uttar Pradesh]

BJP worker Arun Yadav also shared the pictures of the school with the caption' " ये प्राईमरी स्कूल उत्तर प्रदेश के जिला संभल में है ❤️अगर ये दिल्ली की तस्वीर होती तो अंतराष्ट्रीय अखबारों में सुर्खियां बनाई जाती "

[English Translation: This primary school is located in Sambhal district of Uttar Pradesh. Had it been a picture of Delhi, headlines would have been made in international newspapers..]

and VHP leader Prachi Sadhvi also shared the photos of the school on Facebook with the caption, "चौकिए बिल्कुल नही...ये प्राईमरी स्कूल उत्तर प्रदेश के जिला संभल में है-

अगर ये दिल्ली की तस्वीर होती तो सड़ जी विदेशी अखबार में छपवा देते.."

[English Translation: Look, not at all...This primary school is in district Sambhal of Uttar Pradesh- If this was a picture of Delhi, then Sad ji would have got it printed in a foreign newspaper.]

Another user with the name,"अमन त्यागी महादेव" also shared the photos on Facebook with the same caption.

Fact Check:

We used Yandex to perform a reverse image search on one of the images and discovered the same collection of images in a tweet from the verified account of Agra District Magistrate Prabhu N Singh. On October 10, 2016, almost five months before Yogi Adityanath took the oath of office as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, these photos were tweeted.

The search on Google also led us to an article by the Amar Ujala dated January 2017, which credited one 'Kapil Sir' for the school's growth.

According to the story, Kapil was motivated to make the state-run elementary school in Itayla Mafi, Sambhal district, better than public schools when he was appointed headmaster in July 2015. Kapil spent more than Rs 12 lakh out of his pocket to upgrade the school, installing a "high-tech" computer lab, projectors, a bio-metric attendance system, CCTV cameras in the classrooms, and numerous other technological tools.

He explained to Amar Ujala that the school earlier used to receive an inadequate fund of Rs 5,000 every year. In a video report from The Lallantop from February 2017, the principal was named Kapil Malik. Despite just having 15 kids enrolled, Malik told the reporter that it took him three years and six months to refurbish the school.

In the video, while he gave a tour of the facility, he said that the school had only four walls before he began working to improve it. "We received no funding from the administration for the landscaping or the border wall, so I built them myself. I made the restrooms for the kids, the office, and the kitchen, "explained Malik.

According to Amar Ujala, the Education Department visited the school after seeing Malik's work and praised the transformation. The department members also referred to the Itayla Mafi primary school as the "model school" of the state. Malik later earned the State Teacher Award from the Yogi Adityanath-led administration in 2019, according to Dainik Jagran.

Evidently, old images of a primary school in Itayla Mafi, in the Sambhal district of Uttar Pradesh, are being circulated as more modern images of the same institution, with some users attributing this to the Yogi Adityanath-led government's efforts to improve the state's educational system.

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