By Ayush Tiwari
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.”
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.
