A video showing several people climbing on a truck carrying Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) is going viral on social media.
What's the claim here?: Users sharing this are claiming that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members are engaging in an EVM fraud during the ongoing general elections 2024.
This was also claimed by Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav in 2022.
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An archive can be seen here.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
How did we find out the truth?: We performed a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the viral video on Google and this led us to a video report by Mojo Story.
This was shared on 9 March 2022, and the description reads, "Ahead of the counting of votes for the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav alleged EVM theft after videos of trucks carrying EVMs surfaced online."
This was also carried by Navbharat Times and OneIndia News.
The Quint also covered this news in 2022 and it specified that a day after the exit polls predicted a loss for the SP in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections 2022, Yadav alleged that the EVMs in Varanasi were being tampered with to manipulate poll results.
Officials spoke about this matter in 2022: On 9 March 2022, SP shared a video on X (formerly Twitter) of Varanasi commissioner Deepak Agarwal admitting that there were lapses in the movement of the EVMs.
However, he insisted that the EVMs in the cars were used only for "training purposes."
District Election Officer and District Magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma denied the claim and said that these EVMs from the video were the ones used for training purposes.
"The EVMs were being taken to a local college from a separate food godown located in the mandi. Some people with political affiliations stopped the vehicle and spread rumours that the EVM in the car was an EVM used during the election, he said, according to ANI.
The Quint's reporter Piyush Rai also shared a byte of Sharma.
Rai also shared a clip where SP workers confronted senior police officials in Varanasi over these allegations.
Here the officials clarified that these EVMs were being transported to another location for training purpose.
The Chief Electoral Officer, Uttar Pradesh's official X handle also issued a clarification about this incident on 8 March 2022, and mentioned that the EVMs were being transported for training purposes to UP College.
Conclusion: An old video with a false claim linked to EVM fraud amid the 2024 Lok Sabha elections is going viral on social media.
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