UP Polls: Old Video Shared as 'Proof of Voter Fraud by SP Supporters'

The 2017 video was taken during the civic polls in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh.

A video, which is going viral on the internet, claims that burqa-clad supporters of the Samajwadi Party (SP) were caught casting fake votes during the ongoing 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections.

In the video, a woman claiming to be a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate is seen holding multiple Aadhaar cards and asking the voters how they got the identity cards.

Upon checking the viral video, we found that video dates back to 2017 and was taken during the civic polls. The person in the video was indeed a BSP candidate for Rampur Municipal Corporation elections called Shaila Khan.

While we were unable to verify the claims made in the video or the social media posts, it is clear that the video was not taken during the current elections.

CLAIM

The claim with the viral video read, "सपा की फर्जी वोटिंग रंगे हाथ पकड़ी गई बुर्के वालियां. समाजवादी पार्टी को जिताने के लिए उत्तर प्रदेश विधानसभा चुनाव में फर्जी वोट डालने के लिए ही ये हिजाब और बुर्के की नौटंकी पिछले कुछ दिनों से चल रही है. हर जगह धोखाधड़ी".

[Translation: SP's Burqa-clad supporters were caught casting fake votes. This hijab and burqa drama is going on since last few days only to cast fake votes in Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections to make Samajwadi Party win. Fraud everywhere.]

More such posts were found on Facebook and Twitter, archives of which can be found here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

We extracted keyframes from the viral video using the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension, and conducted a reverse image search on some of the keyframes.

While going through the search results, we came across several social media posts from 2019 that had the same video but with a different claim about voter fraud in UP's Muzaffarnagar.

We also heard the woman in the video identifying herself as BSP candidate Shaila. We conducted a keyword search in Hindi and English for "BSP candidate Shaila" and found news reports of one Shaila Khan contesting for the post of Rampur nagar palika chairperson.

A keyword search on Facebook lead us to the same video posted on 28 November 2017.

We found news reports and videos that featured Khan as the BSP candidate. In one of the interviews after the election, Khan talked about the viral video and voter fraud when she was asked for the reason she lost the election.

While we were unable to independently verify if the people in the video were indeed supporters of the SP, it is clear that an old video from 2017 was shared without proper context amid the ongoing 2022 UP elections.

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