Election Commission knows something is wrong with Maharashtra electoral rolls, so not giving us, alleges Rahul Gandhi

The Congress leader made the comments while addressing a joint press conference with NCP's (Sharadchandra Pawar) Supriya Sule and Shiv Sena (UBT)'s Sanjay Raut.

New Delhi: Top Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday doubled down on the Election Commission over Maharashtra elections, claiming that the poll body is not ready to give the Maha Vikas Aghadi parties electoral rolls used for Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the state because the poll body knows that there is “something wrong” with it.

Rahul said the “nice way” to say it is that the EC has “lost control of the list” and the “bad way” is to say is that it has “manipulated” the electoral rolls, while repeating his demands claiming that 39 lakh names were added in five months between Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, against 32 lakh added in five years between 2019 and 2024 general elections.

The “next step, frankly, will be to go to the judicial system” if the poll body continues to deny the Opposition partners in Maharashtra the “centralised” electoral rolls used in the two elections, Rahul told a joint press conference with NCP's (Sharadchandra Pawar) Supriya Sule and Shiv Sena (UBT)'s Sanjay Raut.

The EC said in a post on 'X' that it would respond in writing with a “full factual and procedural matrix uniformly adopted” across the country. It "considers parties, as priority stakeholders, of course the voters being the prime and deeply values views, suggestions, questions coming from political parties", it said.

Separately, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge posted on 'X', “huge discrepancies have been exposed” in the voter lists of Maharashtra and the EC should provide them with a consolidated voter list in Excel format with photographs, which was used for voting. “We will not let the ‘Mother of Democracy’ become a ‘Manipulated Democracy’,” he said.

The electoral roll in Maharashtra used in Assembly election was bigger than its entire population, a new set of voters equalling the voting population of Himachal has been added and it is a list where almost all new votes were going in BJP’s favour, he claimed.

He also alleged that names of many voters have been deleted or transferred ahead of the assembly polls and most of these were from Dalit, tribal and minority communities while suspecting that the number of deletions are much more than the number of additions.

Citing BR Ambedkar’s remarks that “the electoral roll is a most fundamental thing in a democracy”, he said if the EC does not give them the electoral rolls with name, addresses and photos, then there is a serious question now being asked about democracy and it means that the country is heading to “complete destruction of the Constitution”.

He said it is the responsibility of the EC now to come clean on what has happened in Maharashtra while alleging that the EC is not securing Ambedkar’s fundamentals.

To a question, he said if the EC had provided the electoral rolls earlier, it could give them now also. “The list is dynamic. It is constantly changing and anyone can change it. The nice way to say this is the Election Commission has lost control of the list and the bad way to say is that the Election Commission has manipulated the list. What is very clear is that the list in Maharashtra has gone wrong,” he said.

“It is surprising to me that the EC is not ready to give us voter lists and the only reason possible is that there is something wrong and they know it...We have been repeatedly asking for the voters' list so that we could investigate and reach a logical conclusion,” Rahul said.

Though he brought down the number of additions from 70 lakh to 39 lakh aligning with EC figures, he repeated the claims he made in Lok Sabha last week that the quantum of addition in Maharashtra equalled the voting population of a state like Himachal Pradesh and the BJP having a strike rate of 90% in seats where there were huge number of new voters.

Giving an example of Kamthi Assembly seat, he said Congress bagged 1.36 lakh votes in this constituency during Lok Sabha and 1.36 lakh in Assembly polls while BJP's votes rose from 1.19 lakh to 1.75 lakh. “Congress' vote is constant between the two polls. The BJP’s victory margin is nearly equal to the number of new 35,000 voters added,” he said.

He also cited a Ministry of Health and Family Welfare population projection of 9.54 crore for Maharashtra and questioned how the state can have more voters at 9.7 crore voters than its adult population.