A hundred and 46 days before Rahul Gandhi alleged manipulation of electoral rolls in the Maharashtra Assembly election, a former MLC had raised the same complaint in one constituency in the state and tried to attract the attention of the poll panel in vain.

“My constituency, Panvel, is where possibly the largest voter fraud has been committed,” Balaram Patil, the Peasants and Workers Party nominee for the Panvel seat, told The Telegraph Online.

“I am saying so with evidence. I have been saying so before the elections were announced and I am saying so now,” he added.

On February 3 this year, in his reply to the President’s address ahead of the Budget session of Parliament, Rahul had alleged voter-list manipulation in Maharashtra, where the Congress and its alliance partners were routed by the BJP-led alliance in a stunning reversal months after a stellar performance in the Lok Sabha elections .

“I want to bring to the notice of this House some data, some information about the Maharashtra election, very simple stuff,” Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, had said on the floor of the House. “Speaker sir, between the Lok Sabha election, which the INDIA alliance won and the Vidhan Sabha election, the voting population of Himachal Pradesh was added to the voting roll of Maharashtra. Meaning, the entire population of Himachal Pradesh was added to the voter roll of Maharashtra.

“Please understand what I am saying,” Rahul had said. “In Lok Sabha, the difference between Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha was the population of Himachal, the entire population were… almost 70 lakh new voters suddenly arrived between Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha.”

During a party meeting at the end of February, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had held a sheaf of papers in her hands that she said were electoral rolls of Bengal with names of voters from other states like Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Punjab.

Never before in India’s electoral history has so much been said and written about the electoral rolls and the election machinery, the foundation of an electoral democracy.

Earlier this month, 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.

“He [Rahul] is absolutely right. The Election Commission and the BJP are working in cahoots. All of this was pre-planned. The entire poll machinery is corrupt,” Balaram Patil alleged in conversation with The Telegraph Online.

Patel said he started scrutinising the voters list for Panvel when the Maharashtra Assembly polls were announced last year.

He said he had unearthed from Panvel and adjoining constituencies names of 85,211 voters duplicated or even triplicated on some occasions.

In Panvel, there were 25, 855 voters whose names appeared in more than one booth, he alleged. He said he had uncovered similar anomalies in the neighbouring constituencies of Uran and Airoli.

In addition to that 15, 800 voters were enrolled in both Panvel and Belapur, another neighbouring constituency, he claimed.

Patil said he wrote to the sub-divisional officer (SDO) of Panvel, the Raigad district magistrate (Panvel is in Raigad district), poll officials, the chief electoral officer of Maharashtra and finally the Election Commission regarding the discrepancies and sought for the removal of the names from one of either booths.

With no response from any quarter, Patil knocked the doors of Bombay High Court on September 26 last year.

The high court directed the SDO to respond to Patil within two weeks. Again, no action was taken, Patil alleged.

On October 15, 2024, elections to the Maharashtra Assembly were announced, which put the lid completely on Patil’s plea.

A Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde faction) MLA had filed a similar petition in October last year for his constituency, Muktainagar. The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court rejected the plea as the election schedule had already been announced.

Balaram Patil lost from Panvel to the BJP’s Prashant Thakur by 51,091 votes. After the election, Patil asked for the electoral roll details for all the 574 booths in the constituency. He said his request was denied.

Patil said he then engaged Peasants and Workers Party of India cadres, booth level activists in Panvel and collected data. Along with his party cadres and some IT professionals, Patil started analysing the data.

“A total of 11, 628 votes were cast more than once in Panvel alone,” Patil claimed. “I am not raising this because I lost the elections. I am only presenting facts. This is horrible and dangerous for democracy.”

His team has analysed data from 490 of the 574 booths and work on the remaining 84 is on, Patil said.

“I am consulting my lawyers about the next step. There are no elections scheduled now, therefore they can make the corrections. We may go for contempt of court against the poll officials,” Patil said.

The Telegraph Online has emailed the chief electoral officer of Maharashtra, S. Chockalingam, for his comments on Patil’s allegations. If the election official responds, The Telegraph Online will carry it.