In the Karnataka elections, BJP lost 5 seats with a margin of less than 2000 votes, not 99 - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
May 15, 2023
In the wake of the recent Karnataka elections, a social media post that claims BJP lost 58 seats by a margin of 2000 votes & 41 seats by a margin of 1000 votes, thus a total of 99 seats with a margin of less than 2000 votes is being widely circulated. Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: In Karnataka elections, BJP lost 58 seats by a margin of 2000 votes & 41 seats by a margin of 1000 votes.
Fact: In the recently held Karnataka elections, there are only 12 such constituencies, where the margin of the winning candidate is below 2000. While the BJP won 7 of these 12 seats, the Congress party won the remaining five seats. This implies that the BJP lost only five seats in this election by a margin of less than two thousand votes. Further, BJP did not lose any seat with a margin between 1000-2000 votes. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
In the recently held Karnataka elections, Congress with 135 seats passed the majority mark and is yet to form the government. Whereas the ruling BJP had to settle with only 66 seats. However, contrary to the viral claim, BJP did not lose as many seats as claimed in the viral post, by a margin of less than 2000 votes.
According to the Election Commission of India, in the recently held Karnataka assembly elections, there are 12 such constituencies, where the margin of the winning candidate is below 2000. These constituencies can be viewed in the below chart.
While the BJP won 7 of these 12 seats, the Congress party won the remaining five. This implies that the BJP lost only five seats in this election by a margin of less than two thousand votes. Moreover, in all these five constituencies BJP lost by a margin of less than a thousand votes.
Additionally, there are eleven such seats, where the winning margin is between 2000-3000 votes. In these eleven seats, the Congress party has won six, BJP has won three and JD(S) won the remaining two.
To sum it up, in Karnataka 2023 elections, BJP lost only 5 seats with a margin of less than 1000 votes, and no seat with a margin between 1000-2000 votes.