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| - Fact Check: These figures are FALSE! The BJP 's lowest victory margin was 1,587
India Today Fact Check found the BJP did not win even a single seat by a margin of less than 1,000 or 500 votes. Its lowest victory margin was more than 1,500.
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India Today Fact Check
Out of the 240 seats the BJP won, not a single seat had victory margins of less than 1,000 or 500. Its lowest victory margin was more than 1,500.
Following the results of the Lok Sabha elections, many on social media shared a set of figures claiming that the Bharatiya Janata Party manipulated the results in 130 of the 240 seats it won. According to these posts, the 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.
The posts further stated that the actual number of seats the BJP won thus could have been 110 (240-130), insinuating election manipulation. Calling for an investigation into the results of these 130 seats, many added that a professor of Ashoka University named Sabyasachi Das had to resign after he stated that there is a scope for manipulation in such small victory margins.
One person wrote on Facebook, “So BJP has won 30 seats with a margin of <500 votes. Won 100+ seats with a margin of <1000 votes. These seats should be analysed by 3 retired SC Justices. If manipulation has been done, then the real figures are 240-130= Just 110 seats for the NDA.” Its archive can be seen here.
India Today Fact Check found the BJP did not win even a single seat by a margin of less than 1,000 or 500 votes. Its lowest victory margin was more than 1,500.
OUR PROBE
The Election Commission of India has listed all the 240 winning candidates of BJP along with their victory margins on its website. According to it, Rabindra Narayan Behera won from the Jajpur seat of Odisha by 1,587 votes, which was the lowest victory margin of all the BJP candidates. Moreover, the BJP won only eight seats with a margin of less than 10,000 votes.
It is thus, more than clear, that the figures making the rounds on social media are baseless.
This brings us to Professor Sabyasachi Das, who has been mentioned in a viral post accusing the BJP of manipulating the results. Das was an assistant professor of economics at Ashoka University in Sonipat, Haryana. In 2023, he released a research paper named “Democratic Backsliding in the World's Largest Democracy”.
In this paper, Das reportedly expressed the possibility of the BJP winning closely-contested constituencies in the 2019 general elections by manipulating the results. After a lot of backlash, Ashoka University distanced itself from this paper and Das subsequently resigned from the university.
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