A 17-year-old teenager has been detained in Uttar Pradesh after a video showing him casting votes eight times in Farrukhabad Lok Sabha constituency went viral on Sunday, May 19. The boy was identified as the son of Khiri Pamaran village gram pradhan and BJP member Anil Singh Thakur.
Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa has recommended a repolling to be held in the voting station following the incident. “An FIR has been registered under various sections, including those related to violation of voting secrecy,” he said. A complaint was filed to the district election officer by the constituency’s Samajwadi Party candidate Naval Kishor Shakya.
In the two-minute 19 second video, the boy could be seen casting vote eight times on different occasions for BJP candidate Mukesh Rajput with multiple ID cards on an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM). A beep sound could be heard and the VVPAT machine could be seen printing slips with the BJP party symbol. The video was reportedly shared as stories on his Facebook profile.
According to reports, the video was taken during the fourth phase of the Lok Sabha elections on May 13 in Khiri Pamaran village of Uttar Pradesh’s Etah district. Mukesh Rajput is the incumbent MP of the village, which is part of the Aliganj Assembly constituency.
Anil Singh Thakur told Scroll that his son was voting on a machine when it was being tested and claimed that the part where the boy was voting on behalf of mentally and physically disabled voters in the village was edited out.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that the BJP wanted to loot democracy by exerting pressure on the government machinery. “Congress requests all officers performing election duty to not forget their constitutional responsibility under the pressure of power. Otherwise, as soon as the INDIA bloc forms the government, action will be taken in such a manner that anyone will think 10 times before insulting the Oath of the Constitution,” he said.
Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Akhilesh Yadav urged the Election Commission to take action if it feels that something wrong has happened. He went on to say that BJP’s booth committee was actually a “loot committee.”