Biju Janata Dal (BJD), the principal Opposition party in Odisha, on Monday escalated its attack on the Election Commission (EC), alleging large-scale bogus voting in the 2024 general elections and demanding a fair audit of the entire electoral process.
The party’s renewed push comes in the wake of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi raising the issue of “institutionalised chori (theft) to deny the poor their right to vote,” though the BJD claimed it had been the first to highlight these irregularities.
Addressing a press conference at the BJD headquarters, party leader and former Rajya Sabha member Amar Patnaik said the credibility of India’s democratic process required the EC to be “transparent and accountable” in its functioning. “There should be an independent audit starting from the publication of the electoral roll to the polling and counting stages,” he said.
Patnaik alleged “huge discrepancies” between the votes polled and the votes counted in several constituencies, pointing in particular to a sudden spike in numbers after 5pm, the official closing time for polling. “Generally, voting ends at 5pm, with only those already in queue allowed to cast their votes. But there is a massive difference between the figures recorded until 5pm and the final count,”
he said.
The former MP noted that while Rahul Gandhi had taken the matter to the national stage, the BJD had earlier raised “serious misgivings” about the process with the EC. “We flagged not only the possibility of machine errors but also flaws in manual procedures. Yet the EC remains opaque and appears to be avoiding giving political parties the information they seek,” he alleged.
Patnaik also accused the ECI of stonewalling the party’s request for Form 17-C, a statutory document that records voter turnout at each polling station. The BJD leader cited the example of Keonjhar, the Assembly constituency of chief minister Mohan Charan Majhi, where the party claims discrepancies of up to 30 per cent between votes polled and counted. “We are driven to the wall and will approach the High Court,” he said. “The EC’s conduct is undermining the transparency of the election process in this country.”
Former Jajpur Lok Sabha member Sarmishta Sethi, who lost the 2024 election by just 1,587 votes to the BJP’s Rabindra Kumar Jena, alleged significant mismatches between the EVM tallies and figures recorded by the presiding officer and returning officer at polling stations. Sethi said she had immediately approached the EC after her defeat, requesting Form 17-C, but had not received it. “We even sought the data through the RTI route, but nothing has been given to us,”
she added.
The BJD’s campaign for an electoral audit comes against the backdrop of a dramatic shift in Odisha’s political landscape. Patnaik said the demand for an audit was not about challenging the outcome in individual constituencies but about safeguarding the integrity of the electoral process. “Without transparency, democracy becomes hollow. We are only asking the Election Commission to release information that should, by law, be in the public domain,” he said.