A photo is being shared on social media claiming it as a news channel’s opinion poll predicting 350-390 seats to the Samajwadi party in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections 2022. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: News channel opinion poll survey predicting 350-390 seats to the Samajwadi Party in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Elections 2022.
Fact: The photo shared in the post is an edited one. The original opinion poll survey published by ‘India TV’ news channel had predicted 148-150 seats for Samajwadi Party in the upcoming elections. The ‘India TV’ opinion poll survey predicted that BJP will secure a majority of 242-244 seats in the Uttar Pradesh Elections. Recently, FACTLY debunked similar edited photos of Uttar Pradesh opinion polls attributed to different news channels. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On reverse image search of the photo, we could not find any reliable information in the search results. When we searched for the photo with relevant keywords on Facebook, we found a similar opinion poll image on the ‘India TV’ news channel’s official Facebook page. The original opinion poll picture published by the India TV news channel had predicted 148-150 seats for the Samajwadi Party and a majority of 242-244 seats for BJP in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh elections 2022. ‘India TV’ published the same photo also on their official Twitter handle.
On 31 Jan 2022, ‘India TV’ published the complete video of their Uttar Pradesh opinion poll 2022 on YouTube. On comparing the ‘India TV’ opinion poll template with the photo shared in the post, we could clearly observe that the photo shared in the post is an edited version of the opinion poll published by ‘India TV’.
Akhilesh Yadav during multiple public rallies and media interactions asserted that his party will win more than 350 seats and form the government after the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections. But as of now, no news channel had predicted 350 seats to the Samajwadi Party in the upcoming Elections. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the opinion poll photo shared in the post is an edited one.
Earlier, when similar edited versions of Uttar Pradesh opinion polls went viral on social media, FACTLY published fact-check articles debunking those claims. They can be seen here and here.
To sum it up, a morphed photo is shared as an opinion poll predicting 350-390 seats to the Samajwadi Party in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Elections 2022.
