A video of a journalist asking the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) a question about the body not taking action against PM Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah for hate speech during election campaigns has gone viral on social media.
What is the claim?: The clip is being shared to claim that the "spineless" ECI skipped the "brave" journalist's question on the Commission's lack of action against the prime minister and home minister, under the guidelines for the Model Code of Conduct (MCC).
An archive of this post can be seen here.
(Source: Instagram/Screenshot)
This post by Instagram page 'Inquilaab_India' was viewed more than 13 lakh times and liked by nearly 87,800 users are the time of writing this report.
Indian Overseas Congress' social media coordinator Vijay Thottathil had also shared this claim on his X (formerly Twitter) account, but later took it down.
(Archives of more posts sharing the same claim can be seen here, here, and here.)
Is it true?: No. CEC Rajiv Kumar responded to the journalist's question by saying that the ECI would take action against any violators of the MCC, regardless of how high of a "star campaigner" they were.
How did we find out?: The ECI held a press conference to announce polling dates for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and Assembly elections in five states on 16 March.
The livestream of the full press conference is available on the Election Commission of India's verified YouTube channel.
Approximately 58 minutes into the video, the CEC settled to take questions from the media personnel in attendance.
At the 58:23 minute mark, a person can be heard saying, "CEC sir will take four-five questions at one time," which means that he would respond to a set of questions at once, instead of responding to them one-by-one.
We noticed that the journalist seen in the viral video appears at the 1:00:45 mark in the press conference, identifying herself as National Herald's Ashlin Mathew.
Mathew's question was the fourth query in a set of five questions, which included questions by journalists with News Nation, Dinamalar, and BBC.
To her question, the CEC says that if one were to review all complaints that the ECI received in the past "eight, 10, 11 elections," they would see that action was not taken against all complaints.
"Wherever a violation was established, even after receiving a response to our notice, it is not like all violations were investigated. As I said, they are a kind of a moral censor which was have, in the beginning, issued," Kumar added.
"If there is a case that can be made against any person, whosoever the high, star campaigner he or she may be, we will not sit back, we will take action."CEC Vijay Kumar, responding to National Herald's Ashlin Mathew
On Mathew's X account, she reshared a post highlighting the CEC's response to the question she asked during the press conference.
Mathew's reshared a post which carried a short version of the CEC's response.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
Conclusion: A clipped video has gone viral with the false claim that the CEC did not respond to a journalist's query about MCC violations regarding hate speech by PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.
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