By: Umme Kulsum
April 26 2024
Old video of polling agent influencing voters linked to 2024 general elections
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Screenshot of posts showing visuals of a polling agent casting vote for a woman in a polling booth. (Source: X/Modified by Logically Facts)
Fact-Check
The Verdict Misleading
The footage has been online since May 2019, which predates the ongoing Indian general elections.
Claim ID 82ad86d5
What’s the claim?
A video showing a polling agent making two female voters cast their vote on an electronic voting machine (EVM) is circulating online with a claim that she is making them vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the ongoing Indian elections.
The official X (formerly Twitter) account of Uttar Pradesh Congress shared this video and wrote, “This video is a tight slap on the face of the sleeping @ECISVEEP who keeps pretending to conduct fair elections in the country. Does the BJ Party's dream of crossing 400 go through the Election Commission? They are chanting with so much confidence that they will cross 400.” The post was viewed more than 156,000 times at the time of writing this story. Archived versions of the posts can be found here, here and here.
Screenshot of claims made online. (Source: X/Modified by Logically Facts)
However, Logically Facts found the video is at least five years old.
What we found
A reverse image search using the keywords from the viral video led us to an X post (archived here) shared by the political editor of Hindustan Times, Vinod Sharma, on May 15, 2019. The post carried the same viral video. The caption read, “Another achievement #ElectionCommission. Shocking to say the least.”
We also found another X post (archived here) sharing the same video in May 2019. It is to be noted that Parlimentary elections, conducted in seven phases, were held in India between April and May 2019. Logically Facts could not independently confirm the location and date of the video, but it clearly predates the ongoing elections.
The verdict
A five-year-old video has been shared to claim that a polling agent is influencing voters to cast votes in favour of the BJP during the ongoing 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Therefore, we mark this claim as misleading.