Old Incident Of Cash Distribution In Lok Sabha Polls Shared As Recent

The seventh and last phase of voting in Uttar Pradesh will be held on March 7 which will seal the fate of 613 candidates from 54 assembly constituencies across nine districts in the state, Chandauli being one of them. The poll campaign ended on Saturday. The video has been revived and shared in this backdrop.

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The viral video shows a report by News 18 in which people can be seen accusing members of Bharatiya Janata Party of cash distribution before the poll. They allege that Rs 500 was given to each person and they were inked on the finger and directed not to vote.

The video was tweeted by Om Thanvi, a media academic and former editor of Hindi daily Jansatta. The tweet in Hindi translates to 'The World's largest democracy'.

(Hindi: दुनिया का सबसे बड़ा लोकतंत्र!)

Click here to see the tweet and here for archived link.

The video has been shared by several Facebook users with the same caption. See Facebook posts here and here.

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Fact Check

BOOM did a reverse image search on a keyframe of the video and found that it is not recent. The original video is from the Lok Sabha election of 2019.

We did a keyword search on YouTube and found a longer version of the video uploaded on the YouTube channel of News 18 Urdu on May 19, 2019.

The title of the video reads 'Lok Sabha 2019: Locals From UP's Chandauli Village Accuse BJP Workers Of Bribing Them For Votes'.

According to the report, the locals of the area had accused BJP workers of bribing them for votes. The locals claimed that indelible ink was forcefully put on their fingers and they were given Rs 500 to abstain from voting.

We found the same video in a news report on Mirror Now. Description of the video reads 'Residents of Tara Jivanpur village in Chandauli allege ink was forcefully applied to their fingers & they were given Rs 500 yesterday by 3 men of their village'.

In its May 19, 2019 report, NDTV stated that BJP spokesperson Harish Srivastava had denied the allegations. According to the report, authorities had asked protesters to file a First Information Report so that an investigation could be started.

On May 19, wire news agency ANI UP had tweeted that Chandauli SDM Kumar Harsh said, "Complainants are present at police station. We will take action as per the complaint they file."

Economic Times and News18 Gujarati had also reported the incident.

BOOM also found a tweet from the official handle of Chandauli Police quoting Thanvi saying the video is old.

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