Fact Check: Did BJP’s Annamalai Really Receive ‘A Single Vote’ at a Tamil Nadu Polling Booth? The Image Is Edited

What’s the claim?

When the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha election were announced on June 4, a picture on social media was said to show a sheet of results from the Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu. The picture said that Tamil Nadu BJP Chief K Annamalai got only one vote at a polling place. Through the elections, Annamalai ran for office from the Coimbatore district.

A spokesman for the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Salem Dharanidharan, posted the picture on X (formerly Twitter) with the words “Aadu Annamalai gets just one vote in a booth.” There is one plate of pork chukka parcel.

As this was being written, the post had been seen over 38,000 times. Over 500,000 people saw a different post with the same picture. A lot of people shared this picture on social media, making fun of Annamalai’s success in the elections. You can find old versions of these kinds of posts here and here.

Also, the picture was shared by Malayalam news sites Asianet News and Kerala Kaumudi, both of which said that Annamalai got “only one vote” at a Coimbatore voting booth.

That being said, the paper that’s going around on social media has been changed. According to the original picture, Annamalai got 101 votes at that particular voting place.

What we found

Logically Facts found a post on X (archived here) by the Tamil news station Sun News that showed live updates on the vote count on the day of the results. The original picture document in the post showed that Annamalai, the BJP candidate, got 101 votes at the voting booth with the number “BCUAF 07464-312.”

The document also said that Singai G. Ramachandran, who was running for AIADMK (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), got 24 votes and Ganapathy P. Rajkumar, who was running for DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), got 164 votes at the same station in the first round.

Logically Facts also talked to a local reporter in Coimbatore, who sent them the original picture and confirmed that Annamalai got 101 votes at the “BCUAF 07464 – 312” voting place, not just one.

The last piece of paper showed that Annamalai did not get votes in the single digits at any polling place in the Coimbatore Parliamentary seat. According to a document of the results that Sun News shared on X, the voting booth with the fewest votes for him got 62 at the “BCUEK 74482 – 564” address.

We also looked at the official website of the Election Commission of India, which had data broken down by constituency. Despite getting 4,50,132 votes, Annamalai lost the race to P Ganapathy Rajkumar of the DMK, who got 5,68,200 votes and won by a margin of 1,18,068 votes.

The verdict

The picture that said K. Annamalai, President of the Tamil Nadu BJP, got only one vote at a certain Coimbatore voting booth has been changed. At that particular polling place, Annamalai actually got 101 votes. So, we’ve marked this claim as not true.