Tamil Nadu minister for information technology and digital services, Palanivel Thiagarajan on Wednesday criticised the Election Commission (EC) for its inefficiency and accused it of playing a one-sided game.

"The Election Commission was always playing a one-sided game in many ways and now it has become blatant. The one-sided game is half the problem or three-quarters of the problem; grotesque incompetence is the remaining part of the problem. The less we talk about them the better it is. It is a stain on our democracy," said the minister.

Thiagarajan contrasts the EC's performance in 2004, when elections were conducted more with efficiency despite fewer resources, with the current scenario, where he claimed the EC's incompetence and partiality have led to issues like the alleged theft of 1,00,250 votes in the Mahadevapura Assembly segment of Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency.

This comes amid Rahul Gandhi's allegations of electoral fraud in the Mahadevapura Assembly segment of Bangalore Central, where he claimed over 1 lakh fake votes were created to favour the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

"In the 2004 election the technology, manpower, and budget allocated was less. Do you know how long the entire Lok Sabha election took? The entire process between the first phase and the last phase just took only 20 days. And here 20 years later to run one election, they need three months almost, between announcement and counting, it shows great incompetence.

For conducting one election they need three months to complete things. And the same genius government is talking about 'One nation, One election'. If it takes three months for 545 seats then it will take one and a half years to conduct 'One nation, One election'. In that case you don’t have to worry about different Model Codes of Conduct — you will be in elections for 1.5 years every five years! It is ridiculous."

This inefficiency, he claimed, undermined the EC's credibility and the democratic process.

He criticised the government for keeping both the Opposition parties and the public in the dark.

Thiagarajan accused the BJP government of exploiting various agencies such as the CBI, Income Tax Department, ED, and State Bank of India.

"EC is hollow like a straw man. They can’t even publish the Form 17 properly. Just because people started showing discrepancies between the Form 17 and Form 20 they stopped publishing the Form 17 altogether. EC has loosened every rule in the book,” Thiagarajan said.

"How is it that the Government of India is able to announce increases in the MGNREGA wages under the Model Code of Conduct? How is it that the Model Code of Conduct says that ministers in Tamil Nadu cannot use their vehicles or their flags but the Prime Minister is travelling around in a helicopter to do political campaigns? So, the less we say about the Election Commission, the better,” he questioned.