Old video viral as election officers exiting a Sangh office after fixing Lok Sabha polls

“#न्यायपालिका के साथ #कार्यपालिका पर #चुनाव आयोग पर भी ब्राम्हणोका कब्जा #संघ कार्यालय मे चुनाव अधिकारी/कर्मचारी चुनाव की सेटिंग करके बाहर निकलते हुये और सवाल करणे पर जवाब ना देते हुये निकल भाग पडे !! ये है लोकतंत्र !! EVM / VVPAT की सेटिंग पक्की हो चुकी है !! (Along with the judiciary, the executive and election commission is captured. Election officer and workers exiting a Sangh office after setting up the elections. When questioned, they hastily left without answering. This is democracy. EVM/ VVPAT have surely been fixed!)” is the caption subjoining a video currently viral on social media.

It is to be noted that while the caption claims that election officers hurriedly left an office of the Sangh, the video purportedly showed RSS and BJP workers leaving a polling booth after holding a meeting inside the premises.

The man recording the video can be heard asking a person exiting the alleged booth – “What is your name?” – to which he replies, “Jay Prakash”. Upon enquiring about the nature of the meeting, Prakash says, “It was Sangh’s meeting.”

2018 clip

Alt News searched for the video with varied keywords and traced it back to 2018. Posted below is a longer version of the same clip. In the first few seconds, a man seated with a few other people tries to cover his face when the camera faces him. The person recording the video says, “Don’t cover your face. The voter list is visible, which is riskier.” The man was trying to veil his face with a bundle of papers – allegedly a voters’ list. Subsequently, he hides the papers behind his back.

The person holding the camera further questions another man – “What do you have to say about a party holding a meeting inside a polling booth?” The man begins to answer that he was unaware of the meeting and was called since he is a booth official. Subsequently, he was asked to keep mum by another person.

There are various clues in the video which support the claim that the meeting was held at a polling booth and that members of the Sangh and the BJP were present. At 3:33 minutes in the video, a man says, “Yes, definitely, these were members of the BJP.”

Alt News could not locate any media reports of the incident. However, the number plate of a bus visible in the clip indicated that the event took place in Rajasthan, possibly in Jaipur. The plate reads ‘RJ 14’, which is the RTO code for Jaipur.

Rajasthan was one of the eight states that went into legislative assembly polls last year. Since the video was traced back to the same month as the elections (December 2018), it is possible that the clip pertains to the Rajasthan assembly elections. Alt News could not independently confirm the incident. However, as the video exists on the internet prior to the 2019 general elections, it cannot represent a current event.