2019 video shared as recent visuals of a polling agent manipulating voting in the 2022 UP Elections - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
March 1, 2022
A video is being shared on social media claiming it as recent visuals of a polling agent manipulating women voters inside a polling booth in the Pratapgarh district in Uttar Pradesh. Amid the ongoing Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections, this video is going viral on social media. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Visuals of a polling agent manipulating women voters in the 2022 UP Elections.
Fact: The video shared in the post shows an old ‘booth capture’ incident that took place during the 2019 General Elections in Faridabad, Haryana. In May 2019, during the 2019 General Elections, a polling agent was caught manipulating women voters and the voting process inside a polling booth in Asawati village in the Prithala constituency. The Faridabad District Election Officer filed an FIR and immediately arrested the polling agent. The video shared in the post is old and has nothing to do with the ongoing Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On reverse image search of the screenshots in the video, videos with similar visuals were found uploaded on social media at least since May 2019. They can be seen here and here. These visuals were attributed to a polling booth in Asawati village in Haryana. When we searched with relevant keywords, a video with similar visuals was found published by ‘The Times of India’ news website on 13 May 2019. TOI reported it as visuals of a polling agent manipulating women voters and the voting process in Faridabad, Haryana.
This incident reportedly took place during the 2019 General Elections polling inside a polling booth in Asawati village in the Prithala constituency. Reporting the complete details of the incident, several news websites published articles and videos in May 2019. They can be seen here, here, and here.
When this video went viral on social media, on 12 May 2019, the Faridabad district Election officer made a tweet informing that they had filed an FIR and immediately arrested the polling agent who influenced women voters in the Asawati polling booth. Lately, there is no news article or video reporting a ‘booth capture’ incident in the Pratapgarh district in Uttar Pradesh. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be confirmed that the video shared in the post is old and has nothing to do with the ongoing UP Elections.
The person in the video is the Polling agent who has been arrested in the afternoon itself. FIR lodged. He was trying to effect at least 3 lady voters. Observer & ARO with teams visited the booth at Asawati in prithala constituency.  He is satisfied that voting was never vitiated
To sum it up, an old video from the 2019 General Elections is being shared as recent visuals of a polling agent manipulating voters in Pratapgarh polling booth in UP.