Fact Check: BJP Shares Singapore Photo to Showcase Indian Metro Development

The official X accounts of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in West Bengal and Tripura recently shared a picture of a metro train on an elevated line and said it showed how the BJP-led government in India improved metro rail services. This was not true.

BOOM found that the picture was taken at Singapore’s Jurong East MRT stop. The picture was posted on a website run by the government of Singapore to show the world how easy it is to get around the country.

The image is being passed around to criticize the changes that happened before 2014, when the Congress-led government was in power.

People have shared the picture with a Bengali text that reads, “If jobs didn’t grow, how did the metro service get to India’s cities?” The Congress will say, “The BJP will do!”

(Original Text in Bengali: কর্মসংস্থান না বাড়লে কীভাবে ভারতের শহরে-শহরে পৌঁছে গেল মেট্রো পরিষেবা? কংগ্রেস বলবে, বিজেপি করবে!)

The graph also says that in 2014, metro services were only offered in five cities, but by 2024, they will be in twenty cities.

CHECK THE FACTS

BOOM used Google Lens to do a reverse image search on the picture and found that it had been posted on a Singapore government website promoting the country’s easy transportation to people around the world.

The picture was posted in the “Living in Singapore” area with the words “Imagine living in a country where the old and the new live together in peace, where skyscrapers are nestled against nature trails.”

The picture on the Singapore government website is shown below along with the picture shared by the BJP accounts.

We also found that the Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times released a picture that looked a lot like the originally posted picture. The news source said that the picture in their story shows scenes from the Jurong East MRT.

We followed that tip and did a keyword search on the stock photo website Getty Images for “Jurong East.” We found a number of photos from that area.