Fact Check: Was EVM Slammed on the Floor During Lok Sabha Election Polling? Unveiling the Truth Behind the Viral Claim

People on social media shared a video that said someone broke a machine during the Lok Sabha polls. However, Fact Check has confirmed that this claim is not true. There are seven stages to the Lok Sabha Elections. There were three parts. The first two were on April 19 and April 26, and the third will be on June 1. There will be a count of the votes on June 4.

What was claimed in the viral video?

Someone on @MeghUpdates shared a video of someone slamming the voting machine to the ground while they were voting. The people who worked at the voting booth caught him. “Presidency and security teams should be careful and alert… they can do anything out of fear of losing,” it said under the video.

Fact Check

A backward image search of the video’s keyframes showed a similar video to YouTube on May 12, 2023. This was found during a fact check. Details about the video show that it was filmed in Karnataka’s Mysore area during the state elections.

There were also videos from Vijayavani and Sakshi TV, two local Kannada news stations, that had shared the same video on their official YouTube channels in May 2023. A story from The Hindu in May of last year said that these events happened at a polling booth in Hootagalli, which is in the Chamundeshwari Assembly constituency of Mysore, while people were voting. Shivamurthy was named as the person who was accused of ruining the EVM control unit. He was thought to be mentally ill.

The story says that Deputy Commissioner of Police Muthuraj said that a case was opened under section 84 of the IPC because of the man’s mental health. As a result, the man was freed on bail for a crime that could not be proven. In the report, Mysore Deputy Commissioner KV Rajendra also said that the case is being looked into and that the police are waiting for a medical report on the man’s mental health before taking any further action.

Election Commission rejected the viral claim

During the investigation, the Election Commission also shared a post on X on April 27 about the video getting viral. In the post, the Commission said that the claim that the incident had something to do with the elections that were still going on shows “mischievous intentions.” The Election Commission made it clear that this is an old video of the Karnataka Assembly elections in 2023. The Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka also said that the claim on X that this video is of the Lok Sabha polls was not true.

Conclusion

A check of the facts showed that this video has nothing to do with the present Lok Sabha elections. an attack was made on a voting booth in the 2023 Karnataka Assembly elections in the Chamundeshwari Assembly constituency of Mysore.