New Delhi: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's plan to generate goodwill among Muslims in Bihar has backfired because of a newspaper advertisement.
The advertisement, sponsored by the Gujarat government, and published in newspapers in Patna ahead of Narendra Modi's rally, shows burqa-clad girls which it claims are from Gujarat.
However, it is now learnt that the girls featuring in it study in a school in Uttar Pradesh's Azamgarh district and not Gujarat. The picture was taken without permission from a US-based website, twocircles.net, run by Indian Muslims.
"We are utterly shocked that this photograph is so daringly and shamelessly being claimed to be of Gujarat and is being used for image-building purposes," say the owners of the website where the pictures were first published.
Twocircles.net is now planning to sue the Gujarat government for copyright violation.
The government has however, dismissed the allegations. A senior official in the government has pinned the blame on the advertisement agency which was given the task of preparing the copy. The official also defends the advertisement saying that it never claimed that the girls were Muslims from Gujarat.
The Shibli National Girls School in Azamgarh, where those girls study, has lambasted the government for misusing the picture of its students.
"The publication of these pictures without permission goes to show that Muslims are not taken seriously," Dr Iftekhar Ahmad, the Principal, tells CNN-IBN.
Dr Ahmad says he will explore legal options after consulting the school management.
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