New Delhi: Senior Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, has alleged widespread irregularities and rigging in the Maharashtra assembly elections held in November last year. In an article he had written in 'The Indian Express', Rahul Gandhi listed the rigging that took place in the Maharashtra polls.
He wrote about how he had voiced the irregularities of the said polls’ conduct and how he had often doubted the fairness of Indian elections. He said that he was referring to industrial-scale rigging of polls involving the capture of national institutions.
He wrote, “But if some earlier election outcomes seemed odd, the outcome of the 2024 Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha elections is glaringly strange. The scale of rigging was so desperate that, despite all efforts to conceal it, tell-tale evidence has emerged from official statistics, without reliance on any nonofficial source, revealing a step-by-step playbook.”
He alleged that the ruling BJP in the Centre ensured that Election Commissioners are effectively chosen by the Prime Minister and the Home Minister via the 2023 Election Commissioners Appointment Act so that the third member, the Leader of the Opposition, can always be outvoted.
“These gentlemen are also the top contestants in the contest whose umpires are being chosen,” he said.
He questioned the decision of appointing a cabinet minister instead of the Chief Justice on the selection committee, thus removing a neutral arbiter.
He then alleged that the voter register was inflated with fake voters. The Election Commission (EC) data for the 2019 Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha elections was 8.98 crore, the number of registered voters. This became 9.29 crore for the May 2024 Lok Sabha elections, but in just five months, by November 2024, the number reached 9.70 crore. That is when 31 lakh voters were added in 5 years, 41 lakh voters were added in five months. He reminded that 9.70 crore was even more than the 9.54 adults in the state as per the government’s own estimates.
Rahul Gandhi then alleged that voter turnouts were also inflated. As per EC, polling turnout around 5 pm was 58.22 per cent, and even after voting closed, turnout kept increasing, and the final turnout the next morning was 66.05 per cent. This was an unprecedented 7.83 per cent point increase, which is around 76 lakh voters.
He accused the BJP of pinpoint-targeted bogus voting. He noted that EC described the sharp increase in voters as “a welcome trend in participation of youth”.
He further accused that BJP faction concealed the evidence trail. The EC met all Opposition queries with silence and aggression. The poll body also refused to provide voter rolls with photos for the elections. Later, when a High Court directed to share videography and CCTV footage of voting in a poll station, the Centre amended the 1961 Conduct of Election Rules Section 93(2)(a) to restrict access to CCTV footage and electronic records, Rahul pointed out.
“The amendment itself and its timing are both giveaways. The recent exposure of identical/duplicate EPIC numbers has heightened concerns about bogus voters, although this is likely the tip of the iceberg,” Rahul wrote.
“Voter rolls and CCTV footage are tools to be used to strengthen democracy, not ornaments to be locked up while democracy is violated. The people of India have a right to be assured that no records have been or will be trashed,” he wrote.