No, Congress' Kunal Patil Did NOT Get Zero Votes in 2024 Maharashtra Polls

Patil told The Quint that after due diligence, they found that he received 1,057 votes from Dhule's Awadhan village.

A video of a small crowd gathered at a spot is being shared on social media, shortly after the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections concluded.

The claim: The clip is being shared with text in Marathi, which loosely translates to, "Awadhan village. Kunal Baba is showing 0 votes in a village 70 percent of people work in his organization.. there are staunch activists.. people are protesting.. definitely a scam."

• The claim refers to Indian National Congress (INC) candidate Kunal Rohidas Patil, who lost to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Raghavendra Patil in the state's Dhule Rural constituency.

Congress MP Varsha Gaikwad also shared this clip, urging the Election Commission of India (ECI) to look into the matter.

(Archived versions of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here, here, and here.)

Is it true?: No, candidate Kunal Patil received 1,057 votes across four polling booths in Dhule's Awadhan village.

How did we find out the truth?: We looked for more information regarding the video or the protest, but did not find any credible reports about any such incident taking place.

• Under one of the claims on X, we saw a reply by Dhule's district information office, which said that the video was not of a recent or ongoing protest.

• "Not sure where the said video is from. Also, Rohan Kuwar, Election Returning Officer of Dhule Rural Constituency has informed that no such agitation has taken place in Dhule and is not ongoing," the post read.

सदरचा व्हीडिओ निश्चित कुठला आहे याची खात्री होत नाही. तसेच धुळ्यात असे कुठलेही आंदोलन झालेले नाहीत तसेच सुरूही नसल्याचे धुळे ग्रामीण मतदार संघाचे निवडणूक निर्णय अधिकारी रोहन कुवर यांनी कळविले आहे. @Kunal_R_Patil @meedhulekar @erodhulerural06 @VarshaEGaikwad @MahaDGIPR @SpDhule

— DISTRICT INFORMATION OFFICE, DHULE (@InfoDhule) November 25, 2024

Patil's statement: The Quint reached out to Kunal Patil to learn more about the incident.

The candidate, while speaking to The Quint, said that the claim that he got zero votes was false and after doing due diligence, they found that he had received 1,057 votes.

We also accessed booth-wise voting details through Patil's office. The document corroborated Patil's statement, showing that he received a little over 1,000 votes across four polling booths, numbered 247 to 250, in Awadhan village.

Officials clarify: In order to verify the numbers in this document, we looked for more information issued by the ECI.

On X, we came across a post by the account of the district's Electoral Registration Officer, who shared a similar document in English, listing polling booth numbers and votes received by candidate.

06 धुळे ग्रामीण विधानसभा मतदारसंघातील उमेदवार यांना केंद्र निहाय मिळालेले मत pic.twitter.com/Sq5eRnjydX

— erodhulerural (@erodhulerural06) November 25, 2024

The document in this image, too, showed the same numbers, confirming that Kunal Patil received 227 votes at booth number 247, 234 at booth 248, 252 at booth 249, and 344 votes at booth number 250.

Conclusion: The viral claim is false, as Kunal Rohidas Patil received 1,057 votes in Awadhan village in Maharashtra's Dhule Rural constituency.

(With inputs from Himanshi Dahiya and Abhilash Mallick.)

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