A video showing military personnel near a truck is being shared on social media, where users are accusing Indian Army personnel of coercing people to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The claim: Those sharing the video have claimed that the BJP is using Army personnel to "cast fake votes", and that they were influencing "voters for fake votes to the BJP."
An archive of this post can be seen here.
(Source: X (formerly Twitter)/Screenshot)
At the time of writing this report, this post by X user 'RavinderKapur2' had garnered about 2,60,000 views and was reshared by more than 4,500 users.
The Quint received multiple queries for this video's verification on its WhatsApp tipline.
(Archives of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here and here.)
Is it true?: The Army refuted all claims made in the viral video back in 2019, when the same video had been shared with similar claims.
How did we know the truth?: The Quint had debunked the same claim back in 2019, during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The Army refuted the claims made in the video, calling them "complete falsehood."
In their statement, they said that the video was deliberately maligning soldiers of the Grenadier Regimental Centre, who were waiting outside the polling booth when political workers came, shouted slogans around them, and started recording.
“The individuals had rung up Commandant when they were videographed and he told them not to get into any altercation and exercise their right of franchise and get back peacefully,” the Army said in its statement, while rubbishing the allegations in the claim.
Commenting on the accusation of Army personnel casting proxy votes, the statement clarified that out of the 1386 Voter ID applicants that had gone to the ECI, 1304 people had cast their votes.
Clarifying the use of the Army truck, they said that heavy vehicles were provided to ferry troops and families to and from polling booths.
Can the Army participate in elections?: We went through the Army Rules, 1954 prohibits Army personnel in indulging in any kind of political or election-related activities.
Army personnel are barred from participating in political activities.
(Source: Ministry of Defence/Screenshot)
Conclusion: The video of Army personnel waiting outside a polling booth has gone viral with a false claim that the BJP used Army soldiers for fake votes.
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