An Old Photo, a Wrong Context, and a Political Spin — Our Fact-Check

A photo circulating on social media shows a few individuals standing outside a dilapidated hut. The captions claim that the image shows members of the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) standing outside a home during their election campaign in Kerala. The post further suggests that the photo depicts a “Kerala without poverty,” mocking the state’s achievements in poverty eradication. However, the image is old and unrelated to the upcoming elections. Therefore, the viral claim is false.

Claim:

A Facebook user shared a photo on November 17, 2025, with a Malayalam caption that translates to, “It takes a lot of effort to ask for votes and then stand like this. A glimpse of Kerala without poverty.” The individual posted the image in a Facebook group affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) called ഭാരതീയ ജനതാ പാർട്ടി (BJP) കേരള (Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Kerala), which has over 217,400 members.

Other users on Facebook also shared the photo.

We noticed that social media users on other platforms, such as X(formerly Twitter), Threads, and Instagram, also shared the image with similar captions.

Here are the Facts:

We analysed the viral post and found that many social media users had pointed out that the post is “fake”. A reverse image search on the viral photo led us to a X post dated November 30, 2020.

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The caption hints that the image shows a candidate visiting voters during an election campaign.

We identified that the same photo was also shared as a comment by a Facebook user on December 1, 2020, to a post made by the account Troll Malayalam on the same day.

The analysis of the viral photo reveals that it is unrelated to the upcoming local body elections in Kerala and Kerala’s recent poverty eradication program. While we were unable to independently confirm the context of the image, we discovered that it appeared online in November 2020, aligning with the timeline of the 2020 local body elections in Kerala, and may have a connection to that.