The Shiv Sena (UBT) Worli MLA Aaditya Thackeray claimed to have unearthed 19,333 suspicious voters in his constituency, taking a cue from the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi.

Making a presentation on Monday in his constituency, Aaditya said the Election Commission is not listening to the Opposition’s charges.

“The EC has allowed mass rigging in elections by simply not performing its duty to purify the voter lists. We exposed voter fraud in Worli, where we’ve found 19,333 voter anomalies in our post-election study. If this were the case in my constituency, imagine the vote fraud done by those in the current government, across the State,” said Aaditya.

Addressing party workers, he said, "This is not an error but fraud."

The "battle will begin" when parties get the draft electoral rolls, he said while urging party workers to thoroughly study the voters list in each ward ahead of the high-stake Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

Aaditya said a study of the electoral rolls in Worli revealed duplicate entries, mismatched names, and electors without photos.

The election results in last year’s Maharashtra Assembly poll in which the Shiv Sena (UBT), NCP (SP) and Congress faced a rout had prompted Rahul to launch an internal probe on alleged electoral malpractices, for which he has blamed the BJP and the central poll panel.

Rahul had claimed there were huge numbers of additions in the voters list between the Lok Sabha poll of 2024 when the Congress and its alliance partners in the Mahavikas Agadhi had performed well and the Assembly polls held later the same year.

The Congress’ demand from the EC to be provided with a copy of the electoral rolls prepared before both the elections was also turned down.

The Shiv Sena (UBT) leader said the Worli assembly segment had 2,52,970 voters during the Lok Sabha polls held in May 2024.

The number rose to 2,63,352 in the Vidhan Sabha polls in November, which saw an increase by 16,043 votes, while 5,661 were deleted, he added.

Aaditya had won the Worli seat in 2019 on the unified Shiv Sena symbol by a margin of 67, 427 votes. Five years later his margin dropped to 8,801.

He cited an example of one Narhari Kulkarni whose name was deleted during the Lok Sabha polls because the person died but the same person's name figured during the assembly polls with a different EPIC (Electoral Photo Identity Card) number.

"So a new registration was done. Now this person is not in the voters list. This was done on purpose," Aaditya said.

He claimed there are 502 voters whose father/relative's name and the voter's name is the same.

"There are 720 voters with their father's name and surname. Gender mismatch was found in 643 voters, while there are 28 such voters who do not have EPIC numbers," he said adding there are no photographs in the voters list, while in some cases, language other than English and Marathi has been used in the voters list.

Aaditya Thackeray.

Aaditya said 214 households in Worli have 3,355 voters.

He further said 1,200 names were deleted after the Vidhan Sabha polls in Worli without any intimation to voters.

Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday slammed the report saying that he should not try to become Maharashtra’s 'Pappu'.

''I know Aaditya and didn't expect him to do 'pappugiri'. His presentation yesterday was a replica of what (Congress MP) Rahul Gandhi had done earlier. He (Aaditya) shouldn't try to become Maharashtra's Pappu. All that the Opposition is doing is cover firing," Fadnavis said.

"They know defeat is imminent and people are not with them. Their conduct is a mockery of democracy,'' the CM told reporters after the weekly cabinet meeting.

In August, Rahul had in a news conference given a presentation on voter-roll data from one constituency, Mahadevpura under Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency, to present what he claimed was “fool-proof” evidence of electoral roll manipulation, which both the Election Commission and the BJP have denied consistently.

The Telegraph Online had earlier reported that a former MLC Balaram Patil had raised the same complaint in one constituency in the state.

The special intensive revision of electoral rolls is not scheduled to take place in Maharashtra during Phase 2 of the process, though Fadnavis has demanded the same.