Fact check: National flag at Wagah border does not hold world record
A video of an Indian National flag hoisting ceremony is viral on social media. Users claim that it is 80 feet high and is posted at the Wagah border in Punjab. They further claim that it holds a world record as well.
By Newsmeter Network Published on 21 Dec 2020 7:36 AM GMT
Hyderabad: A video of an Indian National flag hoisting ceremony is viral on social media. Users claim that it is 80 feet high and is posted at the Wagah border in Punjab. They further claim that it holds a world record as well.
"New Indian flag at Wagah border is 360 ft hr. Cost Rs 3.5Cr, 55 tons steel, 60 lac rent for a crane to install, 120 ft width 80 ft ht national pole. The flag pole is 350 ft ht 110 ft thick, 12 flags are in spare. This is world record (sic)," reads the caption.
FACT CHECK:
NewsMeter found that this claim is false as there is no world record in the name of the Wagah flag.
During a search, a YouTube video from June 2016 was found. It carried the same music and background with the title "CM KCR Hoists Largest Indian Biggest Flag in Hyderabad"
Using this information, we performed a keyword search and found that the "Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao hoisted the National Flag tied to a 291-ft tall mast on the occasion of the state's second formation day" at the Sanjivayya Park in Hyderabad. It was considered as India's biggest and largest Tricolor at the time of its hoisting in 2016.
It should be noted that the list of tallest and largest Indian flags keep changing as several states try to break each other's record. In 2017, the largest flag was at Attari, near the Wagah border. It was 120 feet in length, 80 feet in breadth, and hoisted on a 360-foot-tall pole.
We also found news reports from 2019 about an upcoming 380-feet tall flag post in Meerut's Waleedpur village.
However, we couldn't find any world record in the name of the Wagah flag. According to the Guinness World Records, until the time of filing this copy, the world's tallest flagpole is in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Evidently, the claim is false.
