Skip to main content

PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Elections & voting fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about elections & voting. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

5,414 published reviews in this topic

FACTLYElections & voting

Video of TMC supporters dancing with guns and swords celebrating the election victory

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video of people dancing with guns and swords, presented as showing TMC supporters celebrating the recent West Bengal election victory. The review reports that reverse-image searches of screenshots from the circulating video led to an Instagram post sharing the same footage in September 2020, before the election celebrations in question. It also found the same video on YouTube, uploaded in October 2020. The review compared the audio across the versions it found: the Instagram and YouTube videos had different background music from the circulating post. Because the “Khel Hobe” song was released in 2021 in the context of the West Bengal elections, the review concluded it had been digitally added to older footage. The video’s online presence in 2020 is the central evidence that it does not show supporters celebrating the later election result. The investigation did not establish the original video’s precise location or the context of the celebration shown. It also reports that CID West Bengal said the video was unrelated to West Bengal and warned of legal action against those spreading it. The review therefore distinguishes between what its searches established—the footage predates the claimed celebration—and what remained unknown about the original scene.

FACTLYElections & voting

Video of TMC supporters attacking police after the declaration of assembly election results

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video of a mob attacking police, shared after the West Bengal assembly election results and attributed to TMC supporters. FACTLY’s review identifies the footage as showing a separate incident in Bhadrak district, Odisha, rather than violence in Bengal. It reports that local residents attacked police and vandalised a vehicle after a fellow resident died following an alleged assault during police interrogation. The review describes how it traced the footage. A keyword search led to a January 2021 news article with an image of a vehicle resembling the one in the video. FACTLY says the surrounding locality in that image also resembled the setting in the latter half of the video. Further keyword searches led to a news video about the Bhadrak incident; the review reports that its visuals of the area around a burning jeep matched the social-media footage. FACTLY also found another news article reporting the same incident: residents of a Bhadrak village set a police van on fire after a fellow resident died following an alleged police assault during interrogation. The review concludes that the footage was from Odisha and had no connection to the post-election violence in Bengal. It notes that reports of violence in West Bengal provided the setting in which the video was shared with the misleading attribution.

Vishvas NewsElections & voting

পশ্চিমবঙ্গাল নির্বাচনের সময় স্যোশাল মিডিয়াতে মিথ্যার বন্যা বয়ে চলেছে। কখনও মিথ্যা ভিডিও তো কখনও ছবির সাহায্যে ছড়ানো হচ্ছে। এখন দেশের স্বরাষ্ট্রমন্ত্রী অমিত শাহের একটি ছবি নিয়ে অশান্তি করা হচ্ছে এবং দাবি করা হয়েছে যে তিনি সোনাগাছি গিয়েছিলেন।আমাদের তদন্তে ভাইরাল ছবিটি মোর্পড বলে প্রমানিত হয়েছে।

Publisher’s rating: FALSE