No, Election Commission has not declared dates for UP Assembly Elections

The Election Commission confirmed to Fact Crescendo that the viral post is False. They have not announced the official dates of the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections in 2022.

Political campaigning is intensifying in Uttar Pradesh as the upcoming assembly elections approach nearer. The present chief minister’s tenure will end next year on 14 March 2022. The Election Commission until then has the responsibility of conducting the upcoming elections before the tenure of the previous government ends. The opposition considers this election as an opportunity to dislodge BJP from UP after the centre repealed farm laws bowing down to the protests by Farmers mainly from Punjab, Haryana and Western UP. Thus, many consider UP election as a litmus test not only for the UP CM Yogi Adityanath but also for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Amidst this, a viral post showing Aaj Tak’s news report on social media is circulating with the claim that the Election Commission has declared the dates for the Assembly elections in 2022. The news report shows the election will start from 11^th of February and continue until 8 March 2022 in seven phases. It further claims that the counting of votes will be conducted on 11^th of March.

The caption of the Aaj Tak reports states that the Election Commission announces poll dates for five states, UP starts on 11 February.

Facebook Post 

Fact Check- 

We started our investigation by running a keyword search on Google to find relevant news report that testifies the viral post. However, we could not find any credible news report that published the same news.

Then Fact Crescendo contacted Joint Director of the Election Commission, Anuj Chandak. He told us “The Election Commission has not made any such announcement. As soon as the Election Commission takes any decision, it (the election dates) will be declared through press conference. The viral news is wrong.” 

Next, we searched for the new reports published by Aaj Tak with the help of keyword search on Youtube. We found that Aaj Tak published this video in 4 January 2017. The caption of the video mentions, “Election Commission announces poll dates for 5 states, UP starts on 11 February.”

The description of the video mentions, “The Election Commission on Wednesday announced dates for elections in five states – Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa. Polling will take place between February 11 and March 8 and the EC has reiterated its commitment towards free and fair elections. To ensure the same, it has spelt out the strict don’t for parties and candidates.”

Below we can see the same screenshot of the Aaj Tak report as seen in the viral post. It is clear that the election dates are of the year 2017 that is the previous assembly election dates. 

We came across a news report published by “Navbharat Times” the dates for the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh could be announced between January 10 and 15.

Conclusion-

Fact Crescendo found the claim made along with viral image on social media to be False. The Election Commission has not yet announced the dates for Uttar Pradesh state assembly elections. The viral dates shows the election dates in Uttar Pradesh in 2017.

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