On Wednesday, a Lok Sabha BJP MP took to Twitter to claim that the saffron party had lost 36 seats by a margin of 2,000 votes or less in the Delhi Assembly elections.
According to a Twitter post by Satyadev Pachauri, "3% more voting could have changed the entire game."
Photo: Twitter screen-grab
For the uninitiated, the BJP won eight seats in the recently concluded polls, while the ruling AAP won 62 seats to form the Delhi government for the second time.
And while a few seats were won with rather slim margins, Pachauri's post is taken verbatim from a message that has been making the rounds on WhatsApp and other social media platforms.
Looking into the above mentioned claim, we realise that the facts given in the message are rather wrong. Many on Twitter attempted to correct the MP, with some even posting screenshots from the Election Commission's website. The MP seems to have eventually clued in, and the tweet was deleted even as this article was being written.
However, at the same time, Pachauri is not the only one to share this erroneous data. If one goes through just Twitter posts, there seem to be countless others who have posted same numbers.
It must also be mentioned that at the last check (before it was deleted), Pachauri's tweet had had 770 retweets.
But this brings up the need for a fact-check. How many constituencies were won by slim margins? And how accurate is the BJP MP's post?
From 70 constituency seats, only 13 were won with a margin of 7,000 seats or less. These are: Adarsh Nagar, Badarpur, Bijwasan, Chhatarpur, Gandhi Nagar, Kasturba Nagar, Kirari, Krishna Nagar, Laxmi Nagar, Najafgarh, Patparganj, Shahdara and Shalimar Bagh.
We've created a full list at the end of the article in case you're curious.
For the BJP, the lowest margin of defeat was 753 votes in Bijwasan.
The only other seat lost by a margin of less than 2,000 votes was the Adarsh Nagar seat that the party lost by 1,589 votes.
Thus, coming back to the original claim, no seats were lost by 100 votes. One seat was lost by less than 1,000 votes, and another by less than 2,000 votes.
Here is the full list with the margin of victory as per official data given by the Election Commission:
ADARSH NAGAR - BJP lost by 1589
AMBEDKAR NAGAR(SC) - BJP lost by 28327
BABARPUR - BJP lost by 33062
BADARPUR - AAP lost by 3719
BADLI - BJP lost by 29123
BALLIMARAN - BJP lost by 36172
BAWANA(SC) - BJP lost by 11526
BIJWASAN - BJP lost by 753
BURARI - BJP lost by 88158
CHANDNI CHOWK - BJP lost by 29584
CHHATARPUR - BJP lost by 3720
DELHI CANTT - BJP lost by 10590
DEOLI(SC) - BJP lost by 40173
DWARKA - BJP lost by 14387
GANDHI NAGAR - AAP lost by 6079
GHONDA - AAP lost by 28370
GOKALPUR(SC) - BJP lost by 19488
GREATER KAILASH - BJP lost by 16809
HARI NAGAR - BJP lost by 20131
JANAKPURI - BJP lost by 14917
JANGPURA - BJP lost by 16063
KALKAJI - BJP lost by 11393
KARAWAL NAGAR - AAP lost by 8223
KAROL BAGH(SC) - BJP lost by 31760
KASTURBA NAGAR - BJP lost by 3165
KIRARI - BJP lost by 5654
KONDLI(SC) - BJP lost by 17907
KRISHNA NAGAR - BJP lost by 3995
LAXMI NAGAR - AAP lost by 880
MADIPUR(SC) - BJP lost by 22719
MALVIYA NAGAR - BJP lost by 18144
MANGOL PURI(SC) - BJP lost by 30116
MATIA MAHAL - BJP lost by 50241
MATIALA - BJP lost by 28075
MEHRAULI - BJP lost by 18161
MODEL TOWN - BJP lost by 11133
MOTI NAGAR - BJP lost by 14072
MUNDKA - BJP lost by 19158
MUSTAFABAD - BJP lost by 20704
NAJAFGARH - BJP lost by 6231
NANGLOI JAT - BJP lost by 11624
NARELA - BJP lost by 17429
NEW DELHI - BJP lost by 21697
OKHLA - BJP lost by 71827
PALAM - BJP lost by 32765
PATEL NAGAR(SC) - BJP lost by 30935
PATPARGANJ - BJP lost by 3207
R K PURAM - BJP lost by 10369
RAJINDER NAGAR - BJP lost by 20058
RAJOURI GARDEN - BJP lost by 22972
RITHALA - BJP lost by 13873
ROHINI - AAP lost by 12648
ROHTAS NAGAR - AAP lost by 13241
SADAR BAZAR - BJP lost by 25644
SANGAM VIHAR - BJP lost by 42522
SEELAMPUR - BJP lost by 36920
SEEMA PURI(SC) - BJP lost by 56108
SHAHDARA - BJP lost by 5294
SHAKUR BASTI - BJP lost by 7592
SHALIMAR BAGH - BJP lost by 3440
SULTANPUR MAJRA(SC) - BJP lost by 48052
TILAK NAGAR - BJP lost by 28029
TIMARPUR - BJP lost by 24144
TRI NAGAR - BJP lost by 10710
TRILOKPURI(SC) - BJP lost by 12486
TUGHLAKABAD - BJP lost by 13758
UTTAM NAGAR - BJP lost by 19759
VIKASPURI - BJP lost by 42058
VISHWAS NAGAR - AAP lost by 16457
WAZIRPUR - BJP lost by 11690
