Protests broke out in the Indian state of Maharashtra after misinformation spread that the election commission declared a candidate from the opposition Congress party received no votes in state elections in November. The false claim was fanned by wider accusations of fraud in the polls, but official records provided by the Election Commission of India (ECI) show the candidate Kunalbaba Rohidas Patil received 1,057 votes in the village where he ran.
“Villagers who voted for the Congress are protesting as the results showed zero votes for Congress,” Indian opposition lawmaker Varsha Eknath Gaikwad wrote in a November 25 post on X, where she has more than 470,000 followers.
She reshared a video with a caption saying it shows Patil’s supporters protesting after the ECI purportedly said he received zero votes in the village of Awadhan in Maharashtra elections.
Screenshot of the false post, taken on December 9
The false claim surfaced amid accusations of fraud from the Congress party after the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s alliance won a landslide victory in the state election, taking 235 out of 288 seats (archived link).
Congress said it had filed a complaint over what it called “glaring discrepancies” in voter turnout data, claiming seven million votes were recorded within the last hour of voting — which the ECI denied (archived here and here).
Patil told AFP the video genuinely shows a demonstration by supporters who were misled by the false claim he got zero votes in the polls, and that he had travelled to the protest site to try to reason with them.
Official records from the ECI confirmed he received 1,057 votes at the polling stations mentioned in the false claim.
Disputed claim
Jitendra Papalkar, district magistrate of the Dhule district, told AFP on November 28 that official records show Patil received “more than a thousand votes” in his constituency.
“The Election Commission is working with complete impartiality, so please avoid rumours,” he said.
Papalkar referred AFP to several posts by Dhule authorities that rebuked the false claim.
One of the posts published by the District Information Office in Dhule on November 26 said “rumours and misleading information about the statistics of #Awadhan polling station in #Dhule Rural constituency are being spread on social media” (archived link).
The thread added that Patil received 227, 234, 252 and 344 votes respectively at the four polling stations in the village, totalling 1,057 ballots out of the 2,881 cast at those stations.
The Dhule Rural Electoral Registration office also shared on November 25 the vote count of each candidate at these polling stations, which matched the numbers provided by the Dhule government (archived link).
Screenshot of the Dhule Rural Electoral Registration office post on X showing polling results
Patil also told AFP that the claim that he got zero votes in the Awadhan village was false.
“People were protesting in confusion so I went among them and explained to them, I may have got fewer votes than I expected but people voted for me at that booth too,” he said.
