Congress leader Rahul Gandhi
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: The Election Commission and Rahul Gandhi on Saturday locked horns over his “match-fixing” in Maharashtra article with the poll body telling him that levelling “unsubstantiated” charges is an “affront to the rule of law” and the Leader of the Opposition asking it not to share “unsigned, evasive notes” but respond to “serious” questions if it has nothing to hide.
The officials said “attempt to defame” the EC after any “unfavourable” verdict was “completely absurd” and any misinformation being spread is “not only a sign of disrespect towards law, but also brings disrepute” to the thousands of representatives appointed by parties and “demotivates” lakhs of election staff who work “untiringly and transparently” during elections.
The flare up was a result of Rahul’s article in newspapers in which he claimed that the Maharashtra results were “glaringly strange” and the “scale of rigging was so desperate that, despite all efforts to conceal it, tell-tale evidence has emerged from official statistics, without reliance on any non-official source”. He also claimed that he was “not talking about small-scale cheating but of industrial-scale rigging involving the capture of our national institutions”.
As EC sources said more than one lakh Booth Level Officers, who oversee electoral roll preparation, in Maharashtra are still waiting for such “wild allegations” to be converted into “at least a single real appeal”, Rahul posted on ‘X’, “dear EC, You are a Constitutional body. Releasing unsigned, evasive notes to intermediaries is not the way to respond to serious questions.”
“If you have nothing to hide, answer the questions in my article and prove it by: Publishing consolidated, digital, machine-readable voter rolls for the most recent elections to the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabhas of all states including Maharashtra; Releasing all post-5 PM CCTV footage from Maharashtra polling booths. Evasion won’t protect your credibility. Telling the truth will.”
Officials said electoral roll revision is conducted under the legal framework envisaged in the Constitution, the Representation of the People Act, 1950, the Registration of the Electors Rules, 1960 and instructions issued by the EC. In Maharashtra, the process was undertaken “under the full glare” of 1,03,727 Booth Level Agents appointed by parties, including 27,099 from the Congress.
There were only 89 appeals filed against the list of 9.77 crore voters before District Magistrate (first appellate authority) and only one appeal before Chief Electoral Authority (second appellate authority). They said it is “amply clear that there was no grievance” of Congress or any other parties on the voters’ list.
Officials said the poll body had on 24 December, 2024 written to the Congress explaining the factual position but it appears that “facts are completely ignored” again. The EC had in April also rebutted a similar allegation made by Rahul in the United States.
With Rahul raising suspicion about “76 lakh” people voting in the final hours, the officials said 6.4 crore people who reached the polling stations between 7 AM and 6 PM voted on November 20 last year and around 58 lakh votes were polled per hour on an average. Going by this trend, they claimed nearly 1.16 crore voters could have voted in the last two hours and therefore, casting 65 lakh votes in two hours is below the average hourly voting trends.
In every polling booth, they said the voting progressed in front of the polling agents and Congress candidates or their agents did not raise any “substantiated” allegations on any kind of “abnormal” voting at the time of scrutiny before the Returning Officer and the Election Observers on the next day.
Congress Media and Publicity Department head Pawan Khera said that the “unsigned response” was “another dishonest attempt to subvert transparency”.
Khera said the questions include how did 41 lakh new voters get added in five months in Maharashtra when just 31 lakh new voters were added in five years, where is the videography of voting post 5 PM and why were the “consolidated, open, digital, machine readable copies of the electoral rolls for both the Lok Sabha and the Assembly elections in Maharashtra not being made public”.