An old video showing the results of an opinion poll purportedly published by ABP News is being shared with a claim that the channel has predicted a win for Congress in the upcoming 2022 Himachal Pradesh elections.
What does the video say?: The video shows Congress getting a majority of 39-45 seats out of 68 seats while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is being projected to win 22-28 seats.
Who shared it?: Congress leader from New Delhi, Alka Lamba, shared the video on Twitter, with a caption that read, "बन गई सरकार... हिमाचल का आभार".
[Translation: Formed the government, thank you, Himachal.]
The video had been viewed 44,000 times when this story was being written. It was also shared on Facebook.
What is the truth?: The video is old and edited. The original video showed an ABP News opinion poll that was telecast before the 2017 Himachal Pradesh Elections and it predicted a win for the BJP.
How did we find that out?:
We noticed that the logo of ABP News in the viral video was an old one, and the channel has updated its logo in December 2020 for all its platforms.
We conducted a reverse image search of one of the keyframes from the viral video and found the original video published on ABP News' official YouTube handle published on 30 October 2017.
The original video gave the BJP a majority of 39-45 seats out of 68 seats, while Congress was projected to win 22-28 seats. The viral part can be seen around 4:44 mark.
The audio of the anchor was also manipulated in a way to reverse the narrative.
Comparison between the viral video and the original video:
What does the latest ABP News opinion poll say?: We found an opinion poll published by ABP News on 14 October for the 2022 Himachal Pradesh elections.
According to the results of the opinion poll, the BJP is likely to win 38-46 seats, Congress projected to win 20-28 seats, 0-1 seats for the Aam Aadmi Party, and 0-3 for candidates from other parties.
Conclusion: Evidently, an old ABP News bulletin was edited to claim that the channel predicted a win for Congress in the upcoming 2022 Himachal Pradesh elections.
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