A viral social media message, claiming that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), won 165 seats in the recently concluded elections to the legislative assembly of Uttar Pradesh (UP), with a vote margin fewer than 2,000 votes is false.
BOOM found the message to be false for two reasons. First, these margins are not supported by official data from the Election Commission of India as there are only 29 seats where the margin of victory is less than 2,000 votes, with five parties including the BJP having victories within this margin.
Second, the AIMIM contested on only 97 seats in UP, and could not have played spoilsport in 165 seats, as the message claims.
The message insinuates that these margins are small since Assaduddin Owaisi's All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) contested the election to help the BJP by eating into Samajwadi Party's (SP) vote share in these 165 seats. The SP, as the overall runner-up in the election, won 111 seats on its own while the BJP won 255 seats, helping them to form the government. AIMIM did not win a single seat.
The BJP, according to the message, won the seats with the following margins in UP:
The BJP winning 165 seats with a margin of fewer than 2,000 votes would imply that nearly 65% - or more than half - of the seats were won through a low margin of votes.
BOOM got the message on...
QUEENSLAND— A nurse in Australia has been formally reprimanded after admitting he submitted forged documents to Qantas (QF) in an attempt to secure a refund for a non-refundable airline ticket. Th...