Claim: Posts shared online criticise new Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif for having photos of himself and his brother and former PM Nawaz Sharif printed on the side of a London bus as part of an ad campaign. Social media users sharing this claim are comparing it to a similar ad campaign run under the previous government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Imran Khan which featured a photo of Quaid-e-Azam, the founder of Pakistan.
Fact: While the image of the Sharifs did appear on London buses after Shahbaz Sharif came to power in April 2022, the ad campaign involving the image of Quaid-e-Azam is not from Imran Khan’s time in power but rather dates back to 2017 before the PTI were in power.
Fact or Fiction?
On 6 May, 2022, a Facebook user shared a collage of two pictures comparing ads on London buses. The post had the following Urdu caption:
عمران خان کے دور میں لندن بسوں پر قائداعظم کی تصویر لگی تھی اور شہباز شریف کے دور میں دونوں بھائیوں کی لگی ہے۔ بس اتنا سا فرق ہے آپ خود بھی دیکھ لیں۔
Translated into English the caption reads, “In Imran Khan’s time, London buses had a picture of Quaid-e-Azam [founder of Pakistan] and during Shehbaz Sharif’s time, it’s a picture of the two brothers. See the difference for yourselves.”
The post claims that while the current government has utilized pictures of the Sharif brothers on London buses as part of an ad campaign, the previous administration under Imran Khan chose instead to use an image of the founder of Pakistan Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
However, Soch Fact Check found that while the image of the Sharifs did appear on London buses after Shahbaz Sharif came to power in April 2022, the ad campaign involving the image of Quaid-e-Azam dates back to 2017, before Imran Khan came to power.
Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse image search using TinEye, which turned up a Dawn News report on a campaign called ‘Emerging Pakistan’, which was introduced by the Pakistan High Commission in June 2017 to celebrate 70 years of Pakistan’s independence. The campaign involved placing shots of Pakistan’s landscape and prominent figures on London buses. The Dawn report carried the image of the ad featuring Quaid-e-Azam as an example of the campaign.
Therefore, Soch Fact Check concludes that the claim that the London bus ad campaign run by Imran Khan’s government featured an image of Quaid-e-Azam is false. The Emerging Pakistan campaign pre-dated Khan’s government. It was in fact PML-N that was in power at the time.
Vitality
To investigate the virality of the post, Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis. Searching the Urdu caption of the post across a 30-day time period from 29 April to29 May 2022 turned up 3,200 interactions across 16 posts on Facebook.
The post was shared here, here, here, here, here, here and here on Facebook.
Conclusion: The photo of an advertisement on a London bus featuring Quaid-e-Azam is not from Imran Khan’s time in office, but rather dates back to 2017, when the PML-N was in power.