A claim has gone viral that the BJP won 30 Lok Sabha seats by a margin of less than 500 votes, and 100 seats by less than 1,000 votes. The claim started doing the rounds soon after the election results were declared on Tuesday, where the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won 293 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha.
Such posts can be seen here and here.
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On carefully analysing the data available on the official website of the Election Commision of India, we found that the lowest margin by which a BJP candidate won the Lok Sabha Poll was 1,587 votes. BJP's Rabindra Narayan Behera from Odisha's Jajpur constituency, who received 5,34,239 votes, defeated BJD's Sarmistha Sethi (5,32,652) by a margin of 1,587.
No other BJP candidate won by a margin less than 1,587 in the recently concluded General Elections according to the data from the Election Commission.
The second lowest victory margin for the party was in Jaipur, where party leader Rao Rajendra Singh won against Congress' Anil Chopra by 1,615 votes. On the whole, only 7 BJP candidates secured a victory with a margin of less than 5,000 votes in the 2024 Lok Sabha Polls.
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Lok Sabha Polls: Who Won By The Lowest Margin?
Shiv Sena's Ravindra Dattaram Waikar won the Mumbai North West constituency with a mere margin of 48 votes. Waikar received 4,52,644 votes, while Shiv Sena UBT candidate Amol Gajanan Kirtikar secured 4,52,596.
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Hence, the viral claim that BJP won 30 seats with a margin of less than 500 votes, and 100 constituencies with a margin of less than 1,000 votes is fabricated.
Result: False
(This story was originally published by News Checker, and republished by NDTV as part of the Shakti Collective)