Fake Screenshot Shows Landslide Win For AAP in 2022 Gujarat Polls

The Election Commission is yet to announce polling dates for Gujarat, making it impossible for the AAP to win.

The graphic is fabricated, and the 2022 Gujarat poll dates have not been announced yet. 

(Source: Facebook/Altered by The Quint)

A graphic showing the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) securing a majority win in the 2022 Gujarat Assembly elections is being shared on social media.

The graph notes that the party won 138 of 182 seats in the states, followed by 30 seats secured by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and 11 seats for the Indian National Congress (INC) party.

It also mentions 1,100 BJP leaders left the party to join AAP.

An archive of this post can be seen here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

(Archives of more such claims on social media can be seen here and here.)

But the post has multiple inaccuracies.

• The Election Commission of India (ECI) is yet to announce the polling dates for the state's upcoming elections.

• No organisation or media house has predicted a win of this magnitude for the AAP in the 2022 Gujarat Assembly elections, nor had they done it for the 2017 elections in the state.

• While 1,100 BJP leaders had resigned over a temple's demolition in Navsari, Gujarat, we found no evidence to back the claim that they had joined the AAP after tendering their resignation. However, we found news reports of Delhi Deputy Chief Minister alleging that over 1,000 BJP members had resigned, and would join AAP in Himachal Pradesh in April 2022.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

Firstly, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has not announced the polling dates for the 2022 Gujarat Assembly elections as on 19 October 2022, making it impossible for AAP to have "won" the elections.

Next, on running a reverse image search on the graphic in question, we came across a video published by a YouTube channel 'SM Headlines' on 8 October 2022, which had the same thumbnail as the graphic in the claim.

We found a video on 'SM Headlines'' YouTube channel.

(Source: YouTube/Screenshot)

However, the video showed Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister and AAP leader Manish Sisodia speaking about BJP leaders resigning to join their party.

The bulletin further claimed that the leaders from Navsari, Gujarat had expressed anger and joined the AAP.

We looked for more details on the statements, and found that they discussed two separate incidents.

• The first video of Sisodia speaking about BJP members defecting and joining AAP is about an incident from April 2022. Sisodia said that over 1,000 block and district-level BJP members would soon join the AAP as they believed that the BJP had lost credibility in Himachal Pradesh, as per a Times of India report.

• Around 1,100 BJP members resigned in protest over the BJP's lack of intervention, after a newly-constructed temple was demolished by the municipal authorities in Navsari, Gujarat, reported The Indian Express. It mentioned that the Congress and AAP had expressed support for the protesters.

Next, we looked for videos of Aaj Tak's Sudhir Choudhary discussing the outcomes of the upcoming elections in Gujarat on the organisation's verified YouTube channel, but did not come across any such bulletin.

However, we saw a bulletin which was streamed live on the channel on 19 August, bearing a resemblance to Chaudhary's appearance and the background from the claim.

We found that Chaudhary's clothing and background matched in both screenshots.

(Source: Facebook/YouTube/Altered by The Quint)

This bulletin discussed the Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) investigation into Sisodia, former excise commissioner Aarav Gopikrishna, former Deputy Excise commissioner Anand Kumari Tiwari, and another unnamed excise official over Delhi's liquor policy.

Further, we looked for older reports by Aaj Tak on the 2017 Assembly elections in Gujarat to check whether they had published or aired the figures from the claim in the previous elections.

But their report showed that the BJP had secured 99 seats in 2017, followed by the Congress with 77 seats. The Nationalist Congress party won one seat, while independent candidates had three.

Since Chaudhary was formerly with Zee News in 2017, we checked Zee News' coverage of the elections as well. Here, too, we did not find any figures matching the ones in the claim in any of their reports.

This makes it clear that graphic has no basis in facts.

Team WebQoof has previously debunked several manipulated graphics showing exit and opinion polls earlier this year, during the Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

Several YouTube channels have been found using unrelated or morphed thumbnails of polls for their videos, while the videos themselves discuss issues that do not match the thumbnails.

Evidently, a fabricated graphic is being shared on social media, to claim that the Aam Aadmi Party secured a majority in the upcoming 2022 Gujarat Assembly elections.

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