Old Photos from Maharashtra Shared as EVMs Being ‘Stolen’ in Bihar

The images showed a polling officer carrying the EVM to a remote area for the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly elections.

Photos of a person carrying an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) through a forested area have gone viral with a claim that EVMs were ‘stolen’ during the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections.

However, we found that the images that can be traced back to 2019 are from Raigad, Maharashtra, and show a polling officer carrying the EVM to a remote area called Kalkarai during the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly elections.

CLAIM

The caption in Hindi, along with the viral image, reads, “EVM की होगी जांच, नितीश जाएंगे जेल? पूछता है युवा, पूछता है बिहार EVM चोरी करके कहां ले जा रहा है। मोदी आयोग चोर है।#Recounting_Bihar_Election
#बिहार_मांगें_रिकॉउंटिंग”

[Translation: EVM machines should be checked again, will Nitish Kumar go to jail? Bihar’s youth and Bihar are asking, where is he taking the EVM machine after stealing it? Modi commission is a thief.]

The photos were shared by people on Facebook and Twitter.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We conducted a reverse image search on the images and found two tweets from October 2019 that said that the photos were from Raigad. We looked for more tweets that included polling in Raigad and came across a tweet posted by the official handle of the District Information Office, Raigad.

Evidently, images from 2019 were shared to falsely claim that they are from the recently concluded Bihar Assembly polls.

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