Fact Check: Old image of Congress empty polling desk falsely linked to 2024 Lok Sabha elections

Hyderabad: After the voting for the first phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections concluded, an image of a desk with the Congress flag and a man sleeping face down on it is in circulation. Those sharing the photo are mocking the ‘abysmal voting trend for Congress’ claiming that the photo shows a demoralised Congress polling volunteer with no voters to collect voting slips.

“There was so much crowd that the polling booth agent got tired and fell asleep,” said an X user sarcastically in the caption while sharing the image. (Archive)

“Congress has fallen asleep in the first phase of elections and will lie down in the next,” wrote another X user who shared the image. (Archive)

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the image has been on the Internet since at least 2019 and is unrelated to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Upon a reverse image search, we found a similar image (Archive) posted by an X user on April 11, 2019. In this image, the number plate of the two-wheeler cropped out in the viral image was visible. The number plate is of the KA series that belongs to Karnataka State.

A Facebook user shared the image on April 11, 2019, stating in the caption that the image is from the ‘Gandhi Nagar segment.’

NewsMeter could not independently verify the exact year and location of the image. However, we found that the image has been on the Internet since at least 2019. Hence, we conclude that the image is being falsely linked to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.