Telangana: Amid minor clashes, record 92% vote in Munugode poll

HYDERABAD: Munugode voters turned out in large numbers to exercise their franchise in the hotly-contested bypoll on Thursday. The record 92 per cent polling exceeded the 2018 assembly election voting percentage of 91.3.
"We expected the voting percentage to cross the last election's turnout. Those who stood in the queue lines before 6 pm were allowed to vote," chief electoral officer Vikas Raj said. Women, elderly persons and youngsters thronged the polling stations as big queues were seen till late in the evening.
The efforts of the parties to get voters residing outside the constituency appeared to have paid off as hundreds of cars were seen heading to Munugode on Hyderabad-Vijayawada NH in the afternoon.
The frenzy surrounding Munugode bypoll may be over but the small segment witnessed increased levels of disinformation, ‘cheap fakes’ and ‘deepfakes’. Due to the intense fight and high stakes involved in the polls, fake images, out-of-context image videos, morphed pictures, audios and videos were doing the rounds, which posed a big challenge to investigating agencies and the Election Commission of India (ECI). Telangana chief electoral officer Vikas Raj lodged complaints with cybercrime cell in some cases and police are investigating them.
“We have not only sent information on disinformation and misinformation to the cybercrime cell of police but also ECO. Both police and ECI are writing to social media platforms to remove such posts,” he said. For instance, an image of a gold coin with the picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi went viral, claiming that Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy was distributing the coins to voters. However, the image was published, linking it to the 2021 polls of Puducherry. In another instance, a survey claiming to be done by RSS went viral on social media. It said BJP was going to lose. However, RSS said that the image was fake. In another instance, an image of utensils filled with liquor bottles soaked in ice was shared as that of liqour flowing in Munugode. However, an image search has revealed that it belonged to 2016.
A letter said to be written by Bandi Sanjay to JP Nadda on why BJP lost elections. However, Sanjay said that it was fake. In a morphed video, Raj Gopal’s meeting with CM KCR was released. A mimicking audio of KCR with a common man in Munugode went viral. A deepfake video of TRS working president KT Rama Rao and Raj Gopal also went viral. Factchecker Ghazala Yasmin of Aliah University said: “Earlier, a deepfake video of BJP chief ministerial candidate went viral, seeking votes in English and Haryanvi, two languages which he does not know. This is a worrisome trend. The deepfake technology can even create entirely fictional, non-existent photos from scratch and thus create fictional living entities.”