An old video from West Bengal showing alleged vote rigging during a municipal poll is being shared online and on WhatsApp falsely claiming votes were cast illegally in Surat's Varachha area during the ongoing Gujarat assembly elections.
BOOM found that the video is from West Bengal and shot at a polling booth station in South Dumdum during the municipal elections held in the state earlier this year.
The first phase of Gujarat assembly elections took place on December 1, 2022 in 89 seats out of the 182-member assembly. According to news reports, an average of 56.88 per cent voter turnout was recorded across 19 districts in the state till 5 pm. The video is being shared in this context.
The video shows a polling agent seated at a desk with electoral rolls and another man wearing a blue striped t-shirt standing near a polling booth. The man standing near the polling booth can be seen pressing the EVM (electronic voting machine) for different voters who enter the booth.
The Gujarati caption with the video translates to, "bogus voting has started. Find such cheaters and send them to jail. Video is from Varachha Area (of Surat). Which polling booth is this is being checked."
(Original Text in Gujarati: બોગસ વોટિંગ ચાલુ થઈ ગયુ છે. આવા ચીટરોને શોધીને જેલ ભેગા કરો વિડિયો વરાછા વિસ્તારનો છે. ક્યાં પોલિંગ બુથનો છે ઇ તપાસ ચાલુ છે)
It is also being shared on Twitter with the same claim. Varachha is a suburb in Surat city.
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Fact Check
BOOM found that the claim is false and that the video is from West Bengal and not Gujarat.
We observed that the persons in the video are speaking in Bangla. Had the video been from Gujarat, the people in the video were more likely to speak in Gujarati or Hindi.
Taking a cue from this, we performed a reverse image search on one of the keyframes from the viral video and did a related keyword search in Bangla which led us to a TV9 Bangla news bulletin from February 27, 2022. The date of the YouTube post coincides with the date of municipal polls in West Bengal in 2022.
The Bangla description of the video translates to, "Not voter but an agent voted in booth no.108 of ward no. 33 of South Dumdum".
Another news article from TV9 Bangla reported that the incident took place at Lake View school in South Dumdum where a polling agent cast a vote instead of a voter. The report further states that the entire incident happened in front of the presiding officer present inside the polling booth.
Opposition parties in the state such as CPI-M, BJP and Congress posted about the incident at that time alleging the foul play in West Bengal municipal elections by the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) government.