A photo through a post is being widely shared on social media claiming that the Election Commission of India (ECI) had announced re-election for seats where EVMs were replaced in the UP election. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Photo confirming re-election by Election Commission in UP due to replacement of EVMs.
Fact: The screenshots of the video reports with the same titles and thumbnails were found in the YouTube channel of “Nation TV”, but such reports are not true. No credible news outlets reported any such news. Press Information Bureau had debunked the screenshots saying that news of such re-polling is untrue. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
The logo of “Nation TV” is on the photo. When “Nation TV” is searched on the internet, YouTube channel by the same name was found. Two videos (here and here) with similar titles and thumbnails, as in the viral photo, were found on its YouTube channel. However, when the videos are played, it features a phone conversation about the exchange of EVMs in one; the other features a possible Supreme Court intervention in an alleged EVM tampering issue. The videos do not feature the news anchors who were present in the respective thumbnails.
When reverse image search is done on the photo, it is found that the anchors were Journalists Sandeep Choudhary (who works at News24), and Ravish Kumar (who works at NDTV).
The video section of the YouTube channel of ‘Nation TV’ has several videos with similar thumbnails and titles alleging re-election to several seats in the recently concluded election in Uttar Pradesh. However, there are no recent credible news reports which say that re-elections are announced by the ECI.
When the same claim was viral recently, PIB Fact Check had tweeted debunking the claim. It said that the picture was fake, and the Election Commission of India did not announce any such re-polling in 142 seats.
To sum it up, the Election Commission of India did not announce any re-election in Uttar Pradesh due to the replacement of EVMs.
