Congress leader Rahul Gandhi revived the allegations of large-scale voter list manipulation in Maharashtra, calling the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) victory in the 2024 Assembly elections a “fixed match”, involving industrial-scale rigging, enabled by the subversion of the Election Commission (EC).
“The fixing side might win a game, but irreparable damage is done to institutions and to people’s faith in the result,” wrote the leader of Opposition in a commentary for the daily Indian Express. “I am not talking of small-scale cheating, but of industrial-scale rigging involving the capture of our national institutions.”
The Congress MP cited the 2023 Election Commissioners Appointment Act as the first step in BJP’s “playbook” in the industrial-scale rigging of elections. “The decision to place a cabinet minister instead of the Chief Justice on the selection committee does not pass the smell test,” he wrote.
Earlier, in a Parliament speech on February 3, and in a news conference, Rahul had claimed that the EC had registered only 9.29 crore voters in the state for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and the number leaped to 9.70 crore during the Assembly polls in just a few months.
“Number of registered voters in Maharashtra in the 2019 Vidhan Sabha elections was 8.98 crore, which rose five years later to 9.29 crore for the May 2024 Lok Sabha elections. But a mere five months later, by the November 2024 Vidhan Sabha elections, the number had leaped to 9.70 crore. A crawl of 31 lakh in five years, then a leap of 41 lakh in just five months. So incredible was this leap that the registered voter total of 9.70 crore was even greater than the 9.54 crore adults in Maharashtra according to the government’s own estimates,” Gandhi wrote, labelling fake voters as another step in BJP’s electoral ‘match-fixing’.
The Congress leader also referred to distortions in EC’s reporting of the final voter turnout and alleged that “targeted bonus voting” turned the BJP into Sir Donald Bradman, the Aussie cricketer known for his exceptional batting average of 99.9 and strike rate of 80.
“There are about 1 lakh booths in Maharashtra, but most added voters were targeted in only about 12,000 booths across 85 constituencies in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had performed poorly in the last Lok Sabha elections. That’s an average of over 600 voters at each booth after 5 pm. Optimistically assuming that each voter needs a minute to vote, voting would need to continue for 10 hours. Since this never happened, it begs the question — how were the extra votes cast? Not surprisingly, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won most of these 85 seats.” Rahul said, drawing attention to the BJP’s strike rate of 89 per cent in Maharashtra polls, something the party had never achieved before.
The final measure to cement BJP’s chokehold on India’s democratic institutions was executed by the EC, which refused to share voter rolls accompanied by photos for the 2024 Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections, alleged the Congress leader.
Highlighting the BJP’s misuse of legislative powers, Rahul added that the central government amended the 1961 Conduct of Election Rules Section 93(2)(a) to restrict access to CCTV footage and electronic records with the sole intention to evade a high court ruling ordering the contrary.
The BJP has yet to issue an official response to the allegations. The EC has previously denied any wrongdoing.