Fact Check: Video Alleging Voter Suppression Is from Bhopal, Not Uttar Pradesh

During the fourth part of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, many people shared videos on social media that said voters were being stopped from voting. In one of these videos, a man says that members of the Bharatiya Janata Party stopped people from voting at his center and the cops did nothing. The video shows a lot of women in burqas at the scene.

People who shared this clip said it was from Uttar Pradesh. A person on Facebook said, “In Uttar Pradesh, voting has been stopped because more and more Muslims are voting.” “Take a look at how democracy is being killed here.” From its past, you can see this.

It was found by India Today Fact Check that the video clip is from Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, not Uttar Pradesh.

Our Probe

Some people said that the man in the video was Isa Ahmad in the comments of one of the posts that went popular. We looked for this person on social media and found a Facebook account with a picture of the person in the video that went popular. India Today Fact Check called Ahmad at the number listed on his Facebook page, and he confirmed that he was the person in the video.

Ahmad, a journalist from the area, said that the posts going popular were not true and that the event actually happened in the Narela ward of Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, not Uttar Pradesh. On May 7, Bhopal voters went to the polls in the third round of the Lok Sabha elections.

Ahmad told India Today Fact Check that BJP workers messed up voting at booth 194 at the NM Convent School because they thought there would be a lot of Muslim voters there. Those workers said there was fake voting, so he demanded that the polls be stopped until a female police officer could confirm the identities of the women in burqas.

So, election officials stopped the polls and said they would start again after the sub-divisional judge inspected the results. Ahmad said that he made the movie that went viral after this. It took 20 to 25 minutes for voting to start up again after the SDM’s visit, he said.

Geolocating the polling booth

Google Maps helped us find NM Convent School in Bhopal. In the comparison below, you can see how photos that were tagged with the place matched the video’s visuals.

Unfortunately, India Today Fact Check can’t confirm the video’s claims of voting suppression. However, it is clear that this event did not happen in UP at all.