Senior leaders of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) and Rahul Gandhi on Friday once again trained their guns on the Election Commission for “irregularities” in the Maharashtra polls, with the Congress leader hinting at approaching the courts.

The development comes a day before the Delhi Assembly election results.

Amid speculation of the MVA coming apart after the Maharashtra poll debacle, Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena (UBT) and Supriya Sule of NCP (SP) joined Rahul for a media conference to demand a centralised voters’ list with names, addresses and photographs from the EC and question the increase in the number of voters in the state within a few months between the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.

The poll panel was quick to respond. “ECI considers political parties, as priority stakeholders, of course the voters being the prime & deeply values views, suggestions, questions coming from political parties. Commission would respond in writing with full factual & procedural matrix uniformly adopted acrossthe country.’’

Earlier, taking the lead at the joint media conference, Rahul said: “In five years, between Vidhan Sabha 2019 and Lok Sabha 2024, 32 lakh voters were added to the electoral rolls of Maharashtra. However, in a period of five months, between Lok Sabha 2024, which the MVA won, and Vidhan Sabha 2024, 39 lakh new voters were added in Maharashtra. Now the question is why are more voters being added in five months after the Lok Sabha elections than in five years?’’

According to Rahul, there are more registered voters in Maharashtra than the entire voting population of the state. Citing the health ministry’s data on Maharashtra, he said the state’s population is 9.54 crore but the EC put the number of voters at 9.7 crore.

In December, replying to the Congress on the increase in voters in Maharashtra, the EC had said: “... there is an addition of 48,81,620 electors and deletion of 8,00,391 resulting in a net addition of 40,81,229 electors in the electoral roll between the period of Lok Sabha Election, 2024 to Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha Election, 2024”.

The poll panel also explained that amendments in 2022 to the Representation of the People Act, 1950, had increased the qualifying dates for age eligibility from asingle date to four dates in a year — two of which were between the Lok Sabha and Maharashtra polls.

Raut alleged that the 39 lakh new voters were a floating vote bank, which would move to Bihar next.

“Some came to Delhi. We saw the Maharashtra pattern here. Next, they will go to Bihar… this is a new pattern with which they win elections. So, the questions we have raised under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi should be asked by everyone. I appeal to the EC to stand up and respond to these issues,” Raut said.

Sule said there was a “multi-pronged” attack on the Opposition, bringing up the issue of split in parties that boththe NCP and Sena have had to deal with.

On the MVA’s demand for a centralised list of voters, the EC has maintained that two copies — a hard copy with images of electors and a soft copy in a scanned format without images — have been made available to recognised political party representatives at the level of the electoral registration officer.

When this was pointed out, Rahul said: “If you have no problem in giving the list, give it to us today.”