After failing to get an authentic voters list of Maharashtra for the Lok Sabha polls and subsequent state assembly polls, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi said the Opposition parties would approach the court.
Addressing a joint press conference along with the alliance partners, Shiv Sena (UT) and NCP (SP) leaders Sanjay Raut and Supriya Sule, Gandhi said 39 lakh new voters were added to the voters list made a few months apart. He alleged that this number was equal to the population of a state like Himachal Pradesh.
Raut was direct in his allegations. “These are floating voters, who will now emerge in Bihar elections. The Election Commission should tell us how these numbers were added.”
“A good way of putting it is that the Election Commission has lost control over the electoral roll. And by way of saying it was that the electoral rolls were manipulated.”
What Gandhi said at the joint press conference was also raised by him in the Lok Sabha during his speech.
Gandhi also hit out at the government saying that the selection process of election commissioners was changed earlier. “Election commissioners were earlier chosen by a committee that included the Chief Justice of India, the Leader of Opposition (LoP), and the Prime Minister. However, the government removed the Chief Justice from the committee and replaced them with BJP members,” he said.
The Congress leader further accused the government of manipulating the composition of the ECI, saying, “One election commissioner was removed, and two new election commissioners were added.”
After the Opposition alliance lost in Maharashtra, these parties alleged large-scale manipulation of the voters' list. These parties have now decided to take the fight to a logical conclusion.
Gandhi alleged that 32 lakh new voters were added in Maharashtra between the 2019 assembly elections and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, further stating, “However, in a period of 5 months between Lok Sabha elections and assembly elections 2024, 39 lakh voters were added.”
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Based on data compiled by Congress, the number of registered voters in Maharashtra exceeded the total adult population, Gandhi charged. The Election Commission of India recorded 9.7 crore registered voters, whereas, “the state's adult population was 9.54 crore (according to Union Health Ministry data)”. "According to the ECI's figures, Maharashtra has more voters than adults," Gandhi claimed.
Citing the example of the Kamthi poll results, he remarked that, “Congress received 1.36 lakh votes in 2024 Lok Sabha elections and 1.3 lakh votes in 2024 Assembly elections, which means our votes remained the same, whereas the number of newly added voters (over 35,000) was close to BJP’s margin from 1.9 lakh votes in Lok Sabha elections to 1.75 lakh votes in the assembly elections last year”.
Many voters—especially from the minority communities—were allegedly “deleted and even transferred from one booth to another”.
The party has demanded that the ECI release Maharashtra’s voter list including names, addresses and photographs of registered individuals.
The matter is set to escalate in the coming days when the battle between the Opposition parties, the government and the ECI reaches the court.
