Video shows Indian PM praising electronic voting, not demanding return to paper ballots

Published on December 6, 2024 at 09:19
3 min read
By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India

As Indian opposition leaders alleged irregularities in voting machines in state elections in November 2024, footage surfaced in social media posts that falsely claimed it showed Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticising the technology before he took office. The clip was in fact taken from a speech Modi gave as prime minister in December 2016, and excludes his praise for the use of electronic voting over paper ballots.

"Bring back paper ballots and save democracy," read Hindi-language text overlay on a Facebook video shared on November 28, 2024.

The 30-second clip shows Modi giving a speech, in which he says in Hindi: "Our country is poor, people are illiterate, people do not know anything.

"Brothers and sisters, when elections are held, even today, educated people of the world read their names on the ballot paper and stamp their names, even in America."

"Found this old video," read a Marathi-language Facebook post that shared the clip. "Before 2014, Narendra Modi said to stop the use of electronic voting machines, that elections should be conducted with paper ballots.

"Why doesn't the BJP (Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party) demand paper ballots now? Did Modi learn they can be hacked to help win elections?"

Screenshot of the false Facebook post, captured on December 5, 2024

The video was also shared with similar claims elsewhere on Facebook and X.

It surfaced as opposition leaders alleged irregularities in voting machines in the November elections in the western state of Maharashtra -- in which the ruling BJP's alliance won a landslide victory (archived link).

Opposition parties have previously questioned the reliability of electronic voting machines, and the accusations sparked fresh protests in the state against the use of voting machines (archived here and here).

India's election commission (ECI) promised a transparent review of the opposition leaders' concerns (archived link).

But, as of December 5, there have been no official reports of Modi criticising the use of voting machines.

The video circulating online was in fact shortened to remove the prime minister's praise for their use in the country.

Uttar Pradesh speech

A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the video found a longer version posted on the BJP's verified YouTube channel on December 3, 2016 (archived link).

It is titled: "PM Modi's Speech at Parivartan Rally in New Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh".

The portion of the YouTube video used in the false posts begins at the 37:26 mark.

But the false posts excluded the portion of the speech that immediately follows, where he says: "But this is India, the people whom you call illiterate and poor know how to vote by pressing a button."

Below is a screenshot comparison of the falsely shared video (left) and the BJP video (right):

Screenshot comparison of the falsely shared video (left) and the BJP video (right)

Modi had been speaking at a rally in Uttar Pradesh state ahead of state assembly elections in 2017.

AFP previously debunked false claims related to the state assembly elections here and here.

Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.

E-mail