Fact Check: Indian Army officials are not influencing voters but transporting their families to cast their votes
Lok Sabha elections 2024 are taking place in 7 phases in India. The first two phases of voting were held on April 19 and April 26 in 190 constituencies. The third phase was conducted on May 7th in a few states.
Army
Lok Sabha elections 2024 are taking place in 7 phases in India. The first two phases of voting were held on April 19 and April 26 in 190 constituencies. The third phase was conducted on May 7th in a few states. The fourth phase is scheduled to be conducted on May 13, 2024. Amidst this, several images and videos are in circulation with false and misleading claims, especially on social media.
One such video showing Army personnel near an army truck is in circulation on Twitter with the claim that they are influencing the voters and are casting fake votes for the BJP. The claim is shared by some X users with the caption “BIG BREAKING. Army is being used by the BJP to cast fake votes. INDIAN ARMY has been assigned to do ILLEGAL & FRAUDULENT work for the BJP. Caught RED handed inside the Election Booths to influence voters for FAKE Votes to the BJP.. #ArvindKejriwal #
Fact check:
The claim is False. The video is an old one and does not belong to elections in 2024. The same video was viral during the 2019 elections too but was found to be false.
When we searched the extracted keyframes from the video and searched them using Google reverse image search, we found a X post by Brigadier Hardeep Singh Sohi, Shaurya Chakra with the caption “WRONG to use name of #IndianArmy to create sensationalism & spread misinfo. Indian Army has always been apolitical. This is an old clip of Grenadiers Regimental Centre veh in #Jabalpur apparently ferrying their folks to exercise #RightToVote.”
Taking a cue from this, we searched the internet using the keywords ‘Grenadiers Regimental Centre, Jabalpur”, and we found that the claim was debunked in 2019 by a few fact-check organizations. In their statement, the Indian Army also refuted these claims. They state that “The allegations are complete falsehood. The individuals had rung up Commandant when they were videographed and he told them not to get into any altercation and exercise their right of franchise and get back peacefully.”
We also found an X post in which the police complaint lodged by the army personnel against the miscreants who shot the video, and also the news article published by the Times of India. The title of the article is ‘We won't be cowed by propaganda’.
According to the news report by The New Indian Express, Army officials in Madhya Pradesh's Jabalpur have filed a complaint against unidentified miscreants for allegedly trying to snatch voter ID cards of general voters, obstructing Army voters posted in Cantonment there and circulating videos to malign the Army's image, on April 29, 2019. This report was published on May 2, 2019.
Therefore, the viral video is not related to the recent 2024 elections. The army officials were transporting their families to cast their votes in an army truck. They were not indulging in any malpractice. The claim is False.