2019 Video of People Alleging 'Voter Fraud' Shared Amid 2022 Uttar Pradesh Polls

The 2019 incident from Uttar Pradesh was widely reported by several news organisations then.

A video in which people are alleging voter fraud against a candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has gone viral ahead of the last phase of the ongoing 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

People in the video alleged that BJP workers stopped people in some districts of Uttar Pradesh from voting in exchange for Rs 500.

However, we found that the video was from 2019 Lok Sabha elections. We found old video reports in several news organisations that showed people seen in the viral video making the same allegations.

CLAIM

The 2:20-minute-long video was shared by people with a caption that read, "दुनिया का सबसे बड़ा लोकतंत्र!" [Translation: The world's biggest democracy.]

The video was first shared by former editor of Hindi daily Jansatta, Om Thanvi, and was then shared by several other Twitter and Facebook users, archives of some of which can be found here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

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

We also used relevant keywords like "Rs 500, BJP, Voting" and that lead us to news reports on the incident that had screenshots and video clips from the similar to that in the viral video.

One of the reports was published on News18 Urdu's YouTube channel, which carried clips of the viral video. The title of the video read, "Lok Sabha 2019: Locals From UP's Chandauli Village Accuse BJP Workers Of Bribing Them For Votes" and it was uploaded on 19 May 2019.

According to the news report, locals from Chandauli Village accused BJP workers of giving people bribe of Rs 500 and forcibly putting indelible ink on their fingers to prevent them from voting.

Video reports on the same incident were also found on Mirror Now. We also found detailed text reports on NDTV and News18.

A tweet by Chandauli Police's verified Twitter handle that stated that the old video was being shared without proper context.

Evidently, an old video showing people making allegations against the BJP was revived and shared amid the ongoing 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

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