A five year old video showing the 'first look' of Mumbai's Lal Baug Ganesh idol, popularly known as Lalbaugcha Raja, is viral on social media as recent festival celebrations amid the COVID-19 restrictions.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has issued a set of guidelines for the celebration of 2021 Ganesh festival keeping in mind the pandemic . According to the guidelines, idols are not supposed to be taller than four feet , and no in-person visits are allowed at the mandals, the 'darshan' can be organized online by the groups for their devotees.
In its 88th year of celebrations now, the Lalbaugcha Raja Ganesh idol which used to be at least 12 feet tall in the previous years, has now been reduced to 4 feet. The idol was unveiled for darshan at 12.30 pm on September 10, 2021. This year Lalbaugcha Raja Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav Mandal will telecast the aartis and darshan live on Facebook and YouTube.
We received the video of the idol's 'first look' on our helpline number +917700906588. The video has been shared with a claim that people gathered at the mandals without masks and did not maintain any social distance in Mumbai for the festivities. It is doing the rounds on WhatsApp with the caption, "No masks, social distancing anywhere in sight! Mumbai, gear up for the 3rd wave!"
The video was also shared by actor Amitabh Bachchan on his social media accounts on September 8, 2021. He posted the 57 seconds video with a caption, " Om Gan Ganpataye Namah .. Ganpati Bappa Morya .. First Darshan, Lalbaugcha Raja"
(Original caption: ॐ गण गणपतये नमः .. Ganpati Bappa Morya .. पहला दर्शन , लालबागचा राजा)
Click here to view the Facebook post.
Based on the video that Bachchan shared, several media outlets misreported stating that it shows this year's first glimpse of Lalbaugcha Raja. The archived versions of the articles can be seen here, here and here.
The video also went viral on Facebook with a claim that it is a glimpse of 2021 Lalbaugcha Raja Ganesh idol's first look.
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Fact Check
BOOM broke the video into its keyframes and ran a reverse image search on a few of them; we found the same viral video uploaded on September 3, 2016 by a verified YouTube channel named Rajshri Marathi.
The video has been uploaded with a caption, "(video)Lalbaugcha Raja FIRST Look | Mukh Darshan | Watch Now | Ganesh Chaturthi 2016"
We also found another YouTube channel that uploaded the same video on September 2, 2016 with a caption, "Lalbagh ke Raja ka Darshan".
Below is a comparison between the viral video and the video from 2016.
Lalbaugcha Raja Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav Mandal held a virtual 'darshan' of the 2021 Ganesh Utsav celebrations for devotees. The video of the online 'darshan' , 2021 can be seen below.
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Below is an image of this year's Lalbaugcha Raja from the verified Facebook page of Lalbaugcha Raja Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav Mandal.
