Invite to Rahul Gandhi: Happy to meet if machine-readable voters’ list and CCTV footage is given, Congress to EC

New Delhi: The Congress on Wednesday told the Election Commission that its leadership will be “happy to meet” the poll body soon if it provides “machine-readable, digital copy” of electoral rolls used for conducting Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Maharashtra and CCTV footage of polling day in both Maharashtra and Haryana.

The party's response came to a letter written by EC Secretary Ashwani Kumar Mohal on June 12 inviting Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi for a meeting in person if he still had “any issues” to raise on Maharashtra election while insisting that the poll process was error-free.

In its letter, the Congress’ Empowered Action Group of Leaders and Experts (EAGLE) said it is “neither helpful nor productive to deflect” from the “simple and straight-forward” requests with “longwinded responses” of addition or deletion of voters or “blaming” a political party's organisational functioning or “claiming these voters’ list were given to individual candidates”.

“We request you to provide us with the machine-readable, digital copy of the Maharashtra voters' list and video footage of the polling day of Maharashtra and Haryana within a week from the date of this letter. This has been a long-standing request which should be easy to comply with for the EC,” the letter said.

The party leadership will be “happy to meet with the EC soon after” receiving voters’ list and CCTV footage. “In that meeting, (we) will even present the findings of our analysis to you,” the EAGLE, consisting of senior leaders Ajay Maken, Digvijaya Singh, Praveen Chakravarty, Abhishek Singhvi, Pawan Khera, Gurdeep Singh Sappal, Nitin Raut and Vamshi Chand Reddy, said.

“It's intriguing and puzzling that except to provide these two voters' list, the EC has engaged in all other sorts of responses, media leaks, and calumny. Why don't you just give us the final voters' lists as requested? Since you have evaded this for so long, we must ask the logical follow-up question -- do you or do you not have these voters' lists? In this context, not providing video footage of polling days raises further doubts and suspicion,” it said.

It said the Congress had since December shared “factual issues” concerning the “sudden, huge increase” in voters for Maharashtra Assembly elections compared to Lok Sabha polls and the “inexplicable upsurge” in polling after 5 PM on polling day.

It claimed that it is “irrefutable” from EC's own data that there were more voters added between the two elections than there were in the prior five years. It has “never happened before and defies basic common sense and logic. Who are these new voters and where did they emerge from?” it said.

The letter said the starting step for any investigation would be to compare the final voters' list and this is precisely what Congress and Rahul have been asking for the past seven months.

The letter said as the party that helped establish India as a sovereign democratic independent republic, it will co-operate with the EC to help strengthen the electoral processes.

EC sources on Tuesday had said that the Congress leader had not responded to their letter written five days after Rahul wrote an article ‘Match-fixing in Maharashtra’ in various newspapers in which he claimed that the Assembly results were “glaringly strange”.

After Rahul's article appeared, EC sources had said the poll body will respond only if the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha formally writes to it. Sources also said levelling “unsubstantiated” charges was an “affront to the rule of law” while Rahul had asked the poll body not to share “unsigned, evasive notes” but respond to “serious” questions if it has nothing to hide.

Sources had then said the “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.