Day before the Delhi Assembly poll results, the leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi raised three questions before the Election Commission of India, as the Congress kept stepping up the heat on the Maharashtra poll results.
“Why did EC add more voters in Maharashtra in five months than it did in five years? Why were there more registered voters in the Assembly elections of Maharashtra than the entire adult population of Maharashtra?” asked Rahul on his ‘X’ handle on Friday afternoon.
Earlier in the day, at a joint news conference, the Congress, Shiv Sena-UBT, and NCP-SS alleged irregularities, claiming 39 lakh voters were added between the Lok Sabha and assembly elections in the state.
Flanked by NCP-SS’s Supriya Sule and Sena’s Sanjay Raut, Gandhi said the adult population of Maharashtra is 9.54 crore as per government data, while the voter population of the state is 9.7 crore.
He said that in the five months after the Lok Sabha elections, Maharashtra added 39 lakh voters, while the state added 32 lakh voters in the five years between 2019 and 2024.
“Our team has meticulously studied the voters’ list and voting patterns, and we’ve been working on this for some time. Unfortunately, we’ve found numerous irregularities. It’s essential for the country, particularly young people who champion and believe in democracy, to be aware of and understand these findings,” Rahul said in the news conference.
The leader of the Opposition also said, “We are now heading towards complete destruction of Constitution,” and said they would knock at the doors of the judiciary.
“There are 39 lakh floating votes, the same name will remain,the same Aadhar will remain, They came to Maharashtra, then came to Delhi and now will go to Bihar,” Raut said addressing the media.
Raut said, “If the EC is alive and is not dead, it should answer questions posed by Rahul Gandhi. Otherwise it will be construed that EC is slave to the government.”
Soon after the news conference here, the poll body said in a post on X, “ECI considers political parties, as priority stake holders, of course the voters being the prime and deeply values views, suggestions, questions coming from political parties.”
“Commission would respond in writing with full factual & procedural matrix uniformly adopted across the country,” it said without naming Gandhi or referring to his allegations.
The Congress MP from Rae Bareilly also cited the example of the Kamthi constituency, a part of the Ramtek Lok Sabha seat in Nagpur district.
“One example among many is Kamthi constituency, where the BJP’s margin of victory is nearly equal to the number of new voters added. The EC must answer these questions and provide us with the electoral rolls of Maharashtra of both Lok Sabha and Assembly polls,” Rahul wrote on X.
In his speech made on the floor of the Lok Sabha on Monday, Rahul had said: “In the five months between the Lok Sabha election and Assembly polls, the voting population of Himachal Pradesh was added to the electoral rolls. Seventy lakh new voters suddenly arrived.”
He had also demanded that the central poll panel should share the data to the partners of the Mahavikas Agadhi, the Congress, the Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP).
In the Lok Sabha polls, the Opposition had won 30 of the 48 seats, with the Congress winning the maximum 13 seats. In the Assembly polls held in November, the BJP alone won 132 seats, while the Congress fared its worst at 16. The MVA partners have alleged that voters were added to the electoral rolls and there was a spike in the voter turnout from the day of polling to counting day.
