By: Ankita Kulkarni
June 7 2024
No, BJP didn't win 100+ Lok Sabha seats 'with a margin of less than 1000 votes'
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The image is a screenshot of a WhatsApp message claiming that BJP won 100 constituencies with less than 1000 margin in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. (Source: WhatsApp/Screenshot/Modified by Logically Facts
Fact-Check
The Verdict False
The narrowest margin of victory for a BJP candidate in Lok Sabha polls was 1,587 votes, well above the '500' or '1000' margin claimed on social media.
Claim ID 23859463
What is the claim?
After the Lok Sabha election results were announced, social media users claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) "won 30 seats with a margin of less than 500 votes" and "more than 100 seats with a margin of less than 1,000 votes." This claim (archived here and here) was accompanied by allegations of manipulation or rigging of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), calling for an investigation.
Screenshot of viral posts on social media. (Source: X/WhatsApp/Screenshot/Modified by Logically Facts)
According to the Election Commission of India (ECI), the BJP won 240 out of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha elections, the results of which were declared on June 4, 2024. However, ECI data shows that the online claim is false.
What did we find?
We analyzed the official data on ECI’s website and found that none of the BJP candidates won the 2024 Indian general elections with a margin of “less than 500 votes,” or “less than 1,000 votes” as claimed.
The narrowest victory margin for the BJP was in Odisha’s Jajpur, where BJP’s Rabindra Narayan Behera clinched the Lok Sabha seat with a margin of 1,587 votes. Behera garnered 534,239 votes, defeating Sarmistha Sethi from Biju Janata Dal (BJD), who had secured 532,652 votes.
The second-closest win for a BJP candidate was in Rajasthan’s Jaipur Rural, where BJP’s Rao Rajendra Singh triumphed by a margin of 1,615 votes. Singh received 617,877 votes, surpassing Indian National Congress candidate Ashok Chopra, who got 616,262 votes.
In Chhattisgarh’s Kanker constituency, BJP’s Bhojraj Nag secured victory with a margin of 1,884 votes. With 597,624 votes, he defeated Congress’s Biresh Thakur, who obtained 595,740 votes.
Apart from these instances, all other BJP candidates secured their victories by margins exceeding 2,000 votes.
The BJP candidates who won their seats by a margin of less than 5,000 votes (Source: results.eci.gov.in/Screenshot)
Furthermore, the narrowest victory margin in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections occurred in the Mumbai North West constituency, where the BJP did not emerge victorious. Shiv Sena candidate Ravindra Dattaram Waikar secured 452,644 votes and narrowly defeated Amol Gajanan Kirtikar of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) by only 48 votes.
The verdict
Data from the Election Commission of India indicates that the smallest margin of votes by which a BJP candidate won was 1,587, disproving the claims of victories by margins below 1,000 or 500. The official data contradicts the claims made online.