As the official tenure of the 17th Lok Sabha is set to expire on 16 June 2024, the general elections to elect the members of the 18th Lok Sabha are expected to take place in the upcoming months of April and May. In this context, a purported official notification from the Election Commission of India (ECI) displaying the dates of the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections in Bihar in seven phases is widely circulating on social media platforms. Through this article, let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Election commission of India has released official notification for 2024 Lok Sabha Elections.
Fact: The Election Commission of India has not yet announced the schedule for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. According to some reports, the expected announcement of the 2024 Lok Sabha election dates is after 09 March 2024. The viral notification displays the election schedule for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To verify the authenticity of the viral claim, we conducted a keyword search for the schedule of the 2024 General Elections. However, we did not find any official notification from the Election Commission of India or any reports from mainstream media about the release of the 2024 Lok Sabha election schedule. According to some reports, the 2024 Lok Sabha election dates are expected to be announced after 09 March 2024.
We checked the Election Commission of India (ECI) website, and we did not find any notification of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections or any press release about the dates of the 2024 general elections. Subsequently, we also checked the official website of the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer of Bihar (CEO Bihar), and we did not find any schedule or press release regarding the election dates of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in Bihar.
Later, we conducted a keyword search on the internet using the dates mentioned in the viral photo, which led us to a news report by India Today in 2019. The two tables seen in the viral post matched exactly with the ones in the report.
We also checked the official websites of the CEO, Bihar and the Election Commission of India regarding the 2019 Lok Sabha election schedule (here & here). Both sources specified that the dates for the 2019 general elections were from 11 April 2024 to 19 May 2019. From this information, it is evident that the 2019 general election schedule reported by India Today has been morphed and is being shared as the 2024 general election schedule.
To sum it up, the Election Commission of India has not yet announced the schedule for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The dates of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections are falsely being shared as the 2024 election dates.
