Amid the 2024 General Elections, a video is being shared on social media (here, here, and here) that claims to show recent footage of a polling agent manipulating votes of women voters inside a polling booth. Let’s verify the authenticity of the claim made in the post.
Claim: Amid the 2024 General Elections, visuals of a polling agent manipulating votes of women voters in the polling booth.
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 2024 General Elections. 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’ 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 agencies 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 have been no reports of ‘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.
Factly had debunked the same video earlier when it was attributed to the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections.
To sum up, an old video from the 2019 General Elections is being shared as recent visuals of a polling agent manipulating votes in the 2024 General Elections.
