Brit Awards hit by fixing claims (Lead, correcting last para)

London Feb 23 (IANS) The Brit Awards have been hit by fixing claims after fans spotted that girl group Little Mix were in the lead for a public-voted gong but failed to win.

Fans noticed that the girl band had the most votes on the website for British Artist Video Of The Year when the poll closed but still lost to singer Harry Styles reports dailymail.co.uk.

Viewers took to Twitter to hurl the charge of riggng and demand that the awards publish the voting totals as proof.

They also shared the screenshot of the online poll - which showed Little Mix in the lead while the former One Direction singer was in second when the vote was seconds away from closing.

The fans also demanded an explanation.

Brit Awards organisers explained by saying: "The final leaderboard was displayed on the Brits website prior to the final count being checked and verified independently by the Electoral Reform Services the company that independently runs all Brits voting processes."

"The leaderboard doesn t work in real time and the vote was incredibly tight at the top. Fans can have complete confidence in the Brits public vote. Multiple tweets by the same user did not count (as per our published terms and conditions) but do help with the trending stats on Twitter which could have led to some confusion amongst voters."

The Brit Awards ceremony was held on February 21. It will be aired in India on Vh1 on Monday.

--IANS
sug/nn/bg