A video in which a woman can be seen accompanying people to the EVM machine as they cast their vote is being shared on social media with a claim that it is from the ongoing Assembly elections in West Bengal.
The Quint, however, found that contrary to the claim, the said video has been in circulation since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
CLAIM
Several people are sharing the aforementioned video on Facebook and Twitter asking the Election Commission for clarification.
Among those who shared the claim is the National Convener and in charge of social media training at Indian Youth Congress – Deepak Khatri and West Bengal BJP Mahila Morcha Vice President – Keya Ghosh.
WHAT WE FOUND
We fragmented the video into multiple keyframes using the InVid Google Chrome extension and ran a reverse image search on one of the frames. This directed us to several Twitter and Facebook posts from 2019, which carried the said video with similar allegations of “EVM hacking”.
Political Editor of Hindustan Times, Vinod Sharma shared the video on Twitter on 15 May 2019 during the Lok Sabha elections.
A website called News Central also published a report on the viral video on 16 May 2019. The report mentioned that while certain social media users had pointed out that the video is from rural Bengal, its exact location has not been ascertained.
Clearly, a video, which is at least 2 years old, has been revived amid the ongoing West Bengal Assembly elections with allegations of ‘EVM hacking’.
(The story has been published as part of the Ekta Consortium – a collaboration of six fact-checking organisations in India.)
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