The Viral picture of Tripura Election Opinion polls showing CPIM getting the majority is edited

On February 27, 2023, Bhupen Kumar Borah, the president of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee, shared a picture on his official Twitter handle regarding the Tripura election opinion polls. The picture claimed that according to the poll, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPIM would secure 34 seats, while the Indian National Congress (INC) would get 8 seats, and the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) would get 3 seats. The Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) was predicted to get 0 seats, so was the Trinamool Congress (TMC). Moreover, the picture shows the Motha securing 13 seats, and the remaining 2 seats going to other parties.

Along with the picture, Bhupen Kumar Borah tweeted that “Tripura CPIM + INC = 40+”, implying that a possible alliance between the two parties could lead them to secure more than 40 seats.

The authenticity of the claim, however, has been called into question. So, we decided to fact check the claim. Let’s Fact check!

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Fact Check

To begin our investigation, we decided to reverse-search the picture shared by Bhupen Kumar Borah on his Twitter handle. During our search, we came across a YouTube video from February 2, 2023, titled “Tripura Assembly Election Opinion Poll” that had a thumbnail matching the picture shared by Bhupen Kumar.

Since the thumbnails are not shown when a Youtube video is played. So, we used a website called Thumbnailphoto.net to download the thumbnail of the video.

Upon comparing the downloaded thumbnail with the picture shared by Bhupen Kumar, we found that the picture used in the YouTube video thumbnail was indeed the same used in the one shared by Bhupen Kumar Borah. This discovery raises concerns about the authenticity of the picture shared by Bhupen Kumar. So, this prompts us to conduct further investigation into the source and reliability of the poll results presented in the picture.

In our quest for fact-checking the authenticity of the picture shared by Bhupen Kumar Borah, we then decided to reverse search the image of the journalist present in the picture. During our search, we came across the same picture of the journalist in a report by BBC News dated January 20, 2020.

Upon comparing the two pictures, we found that the image used in Bhupen Kumar’s shared picture and the ones used in the BBC report were identical. This discovery led us to conclude that the picture Bhupen Kumar shared was edited and a mixture of multiple pictures.

Next, we decided to cross-check the viral photo with the photo analysis website FotoForensics. Upon analysis, we saw Error Level Analysis (ELA) indicating tampering in the photo. This technique is used to identify potential areas of digital alteration in an image, and the presence of ELA in the picture suggests that it may have been manipulated or edited.

Hence, our investigation concludes that Bhupen Kumar Borah’s picture on Twitter about the Tripura election opinion polls is manipulated. He combined multiple pictures to create the image. We cannot confirm the poll results’ reliability presented in the picture.

Besides, manipulated images in political discourse undermine the credibility of our democratic process and erode the public’s trust in our electoral system. So as citizens, we have a collective responsibility to remain vigilant against the spread of misinformation and disinformation. We should verify the authenticity of information before sharing it with others.

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