On 23 November 2024, the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the results of the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections. In the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Mahayuti alliance returned to power with a decisive majority. The BJP won 132 seats, Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) secured 57 seats, and NCP (Ajit Pawar faction) won 41 seats. In the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar faction) won 10 seats, Congress secured 16 seats, and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray faction) won 20 seats (here). Following this, a video of a crowd gathering is being widely shared across social media platforms (here, here, here, and here), claiming that in Awadhan village, Dhule, Maharashtra, villagers who voted for the Congress party are protesting the results, as the tally reportedly showed zero votes for the Congress candidate, Kunal Baba Patil. Through this article, let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: In the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections, Congress candidate Kunal Baba Patil received zero votes in Awadhan village of the Dhule Rural Assembly constituency.
Fact: In the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections, Congress candidate Kunalbaba Patil from the Dhule Rural Assembly constituency received 1,057 votes across four polling booths in Awadhan village. This has been confirmed by the District Information Office, Dhule, and the Dhule Rural Election Authority. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
We conducted a keyword search to gather more information about the video and the alleged protest. However, the search did not yield any credible reports of such an incident taking place. During this search, we came across several social media posts sharing the same video with the same viral claim. One of these posts featured a comment from the District Information Office, Dhule, which denied any such incident occurring in the Dhule Rural Assembly Constituency (here) (archived link). The comment reads: “It is unclear where the said video originates from. Also, Rohan Kuwar, the Election Returning Officer of Dhule Rural Constituency, has confirmed that no such agitation has taken place in Dhule and none is ongoing” (translated from Marathi to English).
Commenting on the same post, the District Information Office, Dhule, stated that according to information provided by the Assistant Election Officer, Dhule Gramin, there are a total of four polling stations in Awadhan village for the 06-Dhule Rural Assembly Election. These polling stations are numbered 247, 248, 249, and 250. Kunalbaba Rohidas Patil received 227, 234, 252, and 344 votes at these stations respectively (here) (archived link). We also noticed another comment by a user who shared a sheet (counting agent’s copy) that showed the same number of votes received by Kunalbaba Rohidas Patil in Awadhan village (here).
Furthermore, we found multiple posts (here, here) (archived link) by the official X (formerly Twitter) account of the Dhule Rural Electoral Registration Officer, which provided information on the votes received by all contesting candidates in the 06-Dhule Rural Assembly Constituency across different polling stations. According to this information, Kunalbaba Rohidas Patil received 227, 234, 252, and 344 votes at the four polling stations (247, 248, 249, and 250) located in Awadhan village of the Dhule Rural Assembly Constituency. From this information, it is evident that the Congress candidate, Kunalbaba Rohidas Patil, received a total of 1,057 votes in Awadhan village of the Dhule Rural Assembly Constituency.
Fact-checking organisations such as Quint and India Today contacted Kunalbaba Rohidas Patil to learn more about this. Speaking to them, he stated that the claim of him receiving zero votes was false and confirmed that he had received 1,057 votes in Awadhan village. In the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections, Congress candidate Kunalbaba Patil from the Dhule Rural Assembly constituency lost to BJP candidate Raghavendra (Ramdada) Manohar Patil by a margin of 66,320 votes. Raghavendra Patil received a total of 170,398 votes, while Kunalbaba Patil secured 104,078 votes (here).
A few Marathi-language news outlets recently shared this video, describing it as a protest by the villagers of Awadhan. These reports stated that the villagers were dissatisfied with the election results and were protesting against them. According to an Aaj Tak report, the video is actually from Dhule, where supporters of Kunalbaba Rohidas Patil were protesting, alleging rigging in the elections, as he received fewer votes. However, the District Information Office, Dhule, stated in a post that there is no information regarding the origin of the video and that no such protest has taken place in Dhule.
To sum up, in the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections, Congress candidate Kunalbaba Patil from the Dhule Rural Assembly constituency received 1,057 votes in Awadhan village.
