Fact check: These congressional tea garden images do not come from Assam

With the 2021 election meeting in Assam, the tea gardens in the state took center stage as political leaders joined tea workers and tried to pluck tea leaves. On March 2, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra visited tea gardens in Assam and interacted with the workers.

Now two images of tea gardens are shared through the Facebook page of “Assam BachaoA congressional campaign – has created a new controversy.

The two photos by the “Assam Bachao” page shows extensive tea gardens and claim that these are photos of Assam tea plantations.

India Today Anti-Fake News War room (AFWA) has found that neither of the two images are of Assam. While the first image is of the Bagua Tea Garden, the second is one of the Bihu Tea Garden in Taiwan.

The archived versions of the posts are saved here and here.

AFWA PROBE

Finance Minister and BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sharma reacted strongly to this Twitter and assert that both of the images shared by Congress are not from Assam, but from Taiwan.

Using reverse image search, we found the truth behind the two images posted by the Facebook page “Assam Bachao”.

Viral image 1

The first image is available on different websites stock included sculpture Getty and Shutter Stock. All these sites report that the image is from Taiwan. According to some websites, the image of the Bagua Tea Garden, Taiwan.

Viral image 2

The second image is also widely available on the internet. As per Getty Images and Media bakery – another site for composite images, this is the “Bihu Tea Garden” in Taiwan.

Therefore, we can safely conclude that the images posted by the Facebook page “Assam Bachao” actually come from tea plantations in Taiwan and not from Assam.