After the declaration of the 2024 Lok Sabha general election results, a newspaper clipping about the defeat of several prominent leaders, including Navaneet Rana, Madhavi Latha, and Kanhaiya Kumar, has gone viral. The article states that all these leaders lost by a margin of 19,731 votes (here & here). This clipping is widely shared on social media, with claims of a conspiracy, as all these leaders supposedly lost by the same margin. In this article, we fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Prominent leaders such as Navaneet Rana, Madhavi Latha and Kanhaiya Kumar lost the 2024 Lok Sabha election by a margin of 19,731 votes.
Fact: The viral clip has been digitally edited to make it appear as though all the highlighted leaders lost by the same margin. However, only Navaneet Rana lost the election by a margin of 19,731 votes. The other leaders lost by significantly larger margins. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
The leaders mentioned in the viral clip lost in the recently concluded 2024 Lok Sabha general election. However, not all of them lost by the same margin. Among the names featured in the viral clip, only Navaneet Rana lost the election with a margin of 19,731 votes.
An internet search for the source of the viral clip led us to the 05 June 2024, edition of Rajasthan Patrika, which shared the same graphic. However, the original clip does not say that all these leaders lost by a margin of 19,731 votes. According to the original clip, only Navaneet Rana lost by that margin, while other leaders like Kanhaiya Kumar, Madhavi Latha, and Ajay Kumar lost by significantly larger margins.
This suggests that the viral clip has been digitally edited to make it appear as though all the highlighted leaders lost by the same margin. Additionally, information available on the Election Commission’s website confirms that these leaders did not lose by the same margin. According to this information, in the Amravati constituency, Navaneet Rana lost to her closest opponent by a margin of 19,731 votes.
Ajay Theni Kumar was defeated by his closest opponent from the Samajwadi Party by 34,329 votes. Meanwhile, Madhavi lost to Asaduddin Owaisi by 338,087 votes, and Kanhaiya Kumar was defeated by BJP’s Manoj Tiwari by a margin of 138,778 votes.
To sum up, this news clip, which shows several leaders losing the election by the same margin of 19,731 votes, has been digitally altered.
