Fact-Check: Did Several Lok Sabha Election Candidates Lose by 19,731 Votes? No!

The figures in the viral claim are incorrect, as only Navneet Rana lost by 19,731 votes.

Sharing a screenshot of a Hindi newspaper, social media users claimed that several well-known candidates, such as Bharatiya Janata Party's Navneet Rana, Madhavi Latha, and Ajay Teni, along with Congress' Kanhaiya Kumar, all lost the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in their constituencies by exactly 19731 votes.

• Those sharing this claim have hinted at there being some "settings" or manipulation with the  Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) used during polling.

(Archives of more claims on social media can be seen here, here, and here.)

But...?: The viral claim is false.

• Apart from Navneet Rana, all the other candidates highlighted in the clipping lost by a margin of more than 30,000 votes.

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How did we find out the truth?: To check whether the figures were accurate, we went to the Electoral Commission of India (ECI)'s website.

• Sorting by date and constituency, we looked for the vote margin for each of the listed candidates.

• Former BJP MP from Amravati, Navneet Rana, did in fact lose by 19,731 votes, to Congress' Balwant Wankhede.

However, Madhavi Latha, who was contesting against All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) MP Asaduddin Owaisi, had lost from Hyderabad with a margin of over 3.38 lakh votes.

Similarly, BJP's Ajay Teni, who contested against Samajwadi Party's Utkarsh Verma, lost by 34,329 votes in Kheri, Uttar Pradesh.

In the Northeast Delhi constituency, Congress' Kanhaiya Kumar lost to BJP MP Manoj Tiwari by over 1.38 lakh votes.

While we could not identify the source of the newspaper clipping, it is clear that the figures listed in the viral claim are incorrect.

Conclusion: A viral claim shared with a newspaper clipping falsely states that EVMs were manipulated because multiple candidates lost by exactly 19,731 votes.

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