An edited screenshot of an old ABP News bulletin analysing the results of an opinion poll has been shared by several Facebook users claiming to be a recent one ahead of the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
According to the numbers seen in the screenshot, Samajwadi Party (SP), led by Akhilesh Yadav, is projected to win over 300 seats in the 403-seat Assembly.
However, we found that the screenshot is old and morphed.
The bulletin is from 2016 where the anchor was talking about the UP election results of 2012.
The graphic has been edited to change 2012 to 2022.
ABP News did publish the results of an opinion poll recently, but the results were in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and not SP.
CLAIM
One user who shared the photograph wrote, "ये तो अभी ट्रेलर है पूरी पिक्चर जनता दिखाएगी| योगी जी आपको। जय समाजवाद।" as the caption.
[Translation: This is just a trailer, the voters will show the whole picture to you, Yogi Ji. Victory to SP.]
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Photo: Facebook/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND
We looked for the results of an opinion poll shared by ABP News for the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections and found one from 8 October.
According to the results of the poll, BJP was projected to get 241-249 seats, while the poll gave 130-138 seats to SP, 15-19 seats to BSP, and 3-7 seats to Congress.
Upon a closer inspection of the viral image, we saw that the logo of the channel was the old one. ABP News changed its logo in December 2020 for all its channels.
We then conducted a reverse image search of the viral photo on Google using relevant keywords.
We found a video report published by ABP News on their YouTube channel discussing the results of opinion poll for the 2017 UP Elections. The video which was uploaded on 16 March 2016 was titled, "ABP News-Nielsen poll : Mayawati emerges as most liked CM candidate".
A link to the video can be found here.
(Photo: YouTube/Screenshot)
Before disclosing the results of the opinion poll, the anchor can be seen discussing the results of the previous Assembly elections conducted in 2012, wherein the SP had gotten the highest number of votes, followed by the BSP and BJP.
In the side-by-side comparison of the two, seen below, we can see that the image has been digitally edited to replace "2012" with "2022".
Comparison of viral photo and screenshot from the 2016 bulletin.
(Photo: Alteredby The Quint)
The results of the opinion poll conducted in 2016 by ABP News was seen in another video uploaded on their YouTube channel. According to the opinion poll, the BSP was leading with 185 seats, followed by the BJP at 120 and the SP at 80.
Clearly, a morphed screenshot from a 2016 ABP News bulletin was shared with a claim that it showed the results of recent opinion poll conducted by the channel ahead of the 2022 polls.
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