The government's official communications agency on Friday apologised for releasing a digitally altered image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's aerial survey of flood-affected areas in Tamil Nadu the previous day, saying the photo it had issued as a "merger of two pictures".In the 24 hours since, social media users have had a field day putting out their own hilarious memes of the situation.Prime Minister Modi had flown to Chennai on Thursday evening to assess the situation in the flood-swamped city and surrounding areas. At around 5 pm, the Press Information Bureau had posted a tweet with an image of the prime minister looking out the window of his helicopter. It was evident that all he could see were cloudy skies. At the same time, the bureau issued another image of one of the inundated areas. A couple of hours later, the agency posted another, very similar photo of the prime minister. This time, the image of flood waters transposed into the one of Modi peering out his window, making it appear as if that was the scene the prime minister was surveying.The original image with the opaque window was shortly deleted from the bureau's Twitter feed.



The before and after images.

Source: PIB on Twitter

"Pictures of Hon’ble Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi undertaking the aerial survey of flood affected areas of Tamil Nadu were released on PIB Twitter Handle and PIB’s website last evening.



Out of the seven pictures released, one picture used the technique of merging two pictures. This is being referred to as “Photoshopping” in sections of media. This happened due to error of judgement and the picture was subsequently deleted. PIB regrets the release of the above mentioned picture. Inconvenience caused is regretted."



Narendra Modi surveying the damage being caused by Indian Bowlers #IndvsSA pic.twitter.com/xWAWYuCMvI

— Joy (@Joydas) December 4, 2015



When your boss is watching and you don't know it. #PhotoshopSarkar pic.twitter.com/OVNRGPzg5K

— Gaurav Pandhi (@GauravPandhi) December 4, 2015



PM Narendra Modi doing an aerial survey of the flood-hit areas of Chennai. Source: @PIB_India pic.twitter.com/xPq0TsLcTR

— Anuradha (@anuradha_kush) December 4, 2015



indias acting PM @AnupamPkher reporting outside d plane to real pm modi ji wen d latter is abroad #PhotoShopSarkar pic.twitter.com/CPWpeXbftG

— Vinay Dokania (@vinaydokania) December 4, 2015



First PM to see Turkey shooting down Russian plane... #PhotoshopSarkar pic.twitter.com/nWq83JTte3

— SparklingStars (@Myth_busterz) December 4, 2015

The manipulation was noticed by social media users within a matter of minutes, and became a talking point.On Friday, the Press Information Bureau stated that the picture "had used the technique of merging two images" and expressed regret for the inconvenience this had caused. Here is the text of its statement.The incident had prompted much humour on social media, with users following the PIB's lead and doing some image merging of their own. Here's a selection.