BJP worker’s son claims in video he cast eight votes in Uttar Pradesh’s Farrukhabad

The Opposition on Sunday called on the Election Commission to act after a video showing a youngster purportedly voting for the Bharatiya Janata Party eight times in Uttar Pradesh’s Farrukhabad Lok Sabha constituency went viral.

The video, shared by Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on social media platform X, showed the person recording himself while allegedly casting votes several times in a series of instances.

The video is from Khiri Pamaran village in Etah district of Uttar Pradesh. The village is part of the Aliganj Assembly constituency, which falls under the Farrukhabad parliamentary seat. Mukesh Rajput, the sitting MP, is the BJP candidate in the constituency. Polling in the Farrukhabad seat took place in the fourth phase of the general election on May 13.

The youngster seen in the video is Rajan Singh Thakur. Rajan’s father, Anil Singh Thakur, 43, told Scroll that his son is 16 years old. Anil is the gram pradhan of Khiri Pamaran and is a member of the BJP.

The boy’s father claimed that the video misrepresented his son.

“He [Rajan Singh Thakur] was actually voting on the machine when it was being tested in some instances,” he claimed. “In others, he was voting on behalf of mentally and physically disabled voters in the village. That part has been edited.”

Anil Singh Thakur has been the gram pradhan of the Khiri Pamaran village since 2021. “I have been with the BJP since I was born,” he said.

He added that he had been called to the local police station shortly after the video was shared and his son had not been booked so far.

Subhash Chandra Prajapati, the additional district magistrate of Farrukhabad, told Scroll that his administration will file a case soon.

“The returning officer is looking into the matter after the chief electoral officer in Lucknow asked for a report,” he said. “We have not filed an FIR [first information report] yet but we will.”

In a social media post, Yadav said that the Election Commission must take some action if it feels that what has happened is wrong. “BJP’s booth committee is actually a loot committee,” the former chief minister added.

The Congress said in a social media post: “Election Commission ji, you are seeing… a boy is voting 8-8 times. At least wake up now.”

The Congress and the Samajwadi Party are part of the Opposition INDIA bloc. In recent weeks, the Opposition has complained that the poll panel has not been taking prompt action against violations of the Model Code of Conduct or election norms.

After Yadav shared the video on social media, Naval Kishor Shakya, the Samajwadi Party candidate in Farrukhabad, sent a complaint to the district election officer.

In his complaint, Shakya demanded re-polling at the polling centre, alleging that Rajan Singh Thakur cast votes after snatching voter information slips from other voters and that he was assisted by Dinesh Thakur, the station house officer at the local police station.

Shakya told Scroll that the 16-year-old shared the videos on the stories section of his Facebook page.

In the 2022 Assembly polls, the BJP secured 62% of the votes in Khiri Pamaran, followed by the Samajwadi Party at 31%, according to official booth-level data released by the Election Commission. The Hindutva party had won the Farrukhabad Lok Sabha seat in 2019 by a margin of more than 2.2 lakh votes.

This is the second such known instance in this general election. In earlier May, the Gujarat Police had arrested two BJP workers for allegedly casting bogus votes in the Dahod constituency’s Prathampura area and live-streaming the act on social media. The Election Commission held re-polling at the booth in Prathampura on May 11.

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