A court in Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow district has directed that a complaint case be registered against the editor of news agency ANI, Smita Prakash, for publishing allegedly false reports attributed to the Election Commission, Live Law reported.

A complaint case is a formal allegation made to a court that an offence has been committed.

The court took cognisance of a complaint filed by former Indian Police Service officer Amitabh Thakur against Prakash, alleging that ANI published reports attributed to the Election Commission that were not released on its official website or social media handles.

The order, passed by the Judicial Magistrate-III, Lucknow, on September 11, held that the complaint was procedurally in order and could be registered as a complaint case.

The complainant has been directed to appear before the court on September 26 to record his statement, the legal news outlet reported.

In his complaint, Thakur has alleged that ANI has been disseminating false information in the name of a constitutional body, without any official confirmation.

He referred to several instances in August, including the new agency’s post on X that quoted the poll body in response to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s claims of vote theft.

On August 7, Gandhi said that his party had spent six months examining the electoral rolls in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura Assembly segment of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency and found discrepancies in more than one lakh names.

Thakur said that ANI published a post at 3.08 pm on August 7 with a purported response from the Election Commission objecting to Gandhi’s allegations, Live Law reported.

However, the poll body posted its official response later in the day, first in Hindi at 5.59 pm and then in English at 7.55 pm, through its verified handle on X, calling the Congress leader’s claims “misleading, baseless and threatening”.

“ANI has been seen relaying…false news in the name of [the Election Commission] without any official back up of any kind,” Live Law quoted Thakur as saying. “The issue of leakage of news from ANI presents another aspect related with the functioning of ANI. It raises possibilities of illegal infiltration of ANI in the [Election Commission] system, to the extent of illegally procuring and then leaking insider information.”

Thakur argued that the actions constituted offences under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita related to cheating and causing wrongful loss.

Scroll emailed ANI seeking a comment on the UP court’s order. This story will be updated if the news agency responds.

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