Social media is abuzz with a viral post which falsely claims that several candidates of Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress party got the exact same numbers of votes: 2,11,820 and 1,40,295 respectively. The post accompanies a message which reads: How is this possible without EVM setting?
(Hindi: बिना EVM सेटिंग ये कैसे सम्भव हो सकता है |)
While the post goes on to name seven candidates from BJP and mentions the number of votes each of them have received, it mentions only the votes received by the Congress candidates skipping their names. Interestingly, the number of votes polled by all the BJP candidates are 2,11,820 while that by the Congress candidates are 1,40,295.
The archived version of the post, which is being shared widely on Twitter and Facebook currently, can be accessed here.
Fact Check
All the seven BJP candidates named in the post had contested the election from different constituencies in Uttar Pradesh. The names of seven candidates and their constituencies are listed below:
Bharatiya Janta Party
- Bhola Singh (Bulandshahar)
- Maneka Gandhi (Sultanpur)
- Upendra Narsing (Barabanki)
- Harish Dwivedi (Basti)
- Satyapal Singh (Bagpat)
- Sang Mitra Maurya (Badaun)
- Kunwar Bhartendra Singh (Bijnour)
BOOM checked the Election Commission of India's website to find out the poll count. We found that the number of votes shown on the viral post is completely different from what the ECI uploaded on its website.
Here are the number of votes received by the BJP candidates as mentioned on the ECI website.
- Bhola Singh: 6,77,196
- Maneka Gandhi: 4,58,281
- Upendra Narsing: 5,35,594
- Harish Dwivedi: 4,69,214
- Satyapal Singh: 5,19,631
- Sang Mitra Maurya: 5,10,343
- Kunwar Bhartendra Singh: 4,88,061
Given below are the screen shots of the vote shares in all the seven constituencies.