Supreme Court dismisses plea to form SIT to probe Rahul Gandhi's allegations of electoral rolls manipulation

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a PIL for a direction to constitute a special investigation team headed by a former Judge, to inquire into the allegations of large-scale electoral roll manipulation in Mahadevapura Assembly constituency in Bengaluru Central and other affected constituencies in the country.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi declined to entertain the plea filed a Supreme Court advocate and Congress party member, Rohit Pandey.

"We are not inclined to entertain the writ petition which is purportedly filed in public interest," the bench said.

The court, however, said the petitioner was at liberty to raise the issue with the Election Commission, if deemed appropriate.

The counsel for the petitioner, contended a representation was made before the EC, but it has not been considered and no action was taken.

The court, however, dismissed the plea, and asked the petitioner to avail of appropriate remedies under the law.

In the plea, the petitioner cited the allegations made by Leader of Opposition, Rahul Gandhi in a press conference on August 7, 2025.

The plea said, what is at stake here is not the outcome of a single electoral contest, but the integrity and credibility of the electoral roll itself, the bedrock upon which the entire democratic process stands.

"When the electoral roll is corrupted by wrongful deletions and fraudulent insertions, the right to vote ceases to be equally accessible to all citizens, undermining the constitutional promise of universal adult suffrage," it said.

The plea also sought a direction to the Election Commission that no further revision or finalisation of electoral rolls would be undertaken until compliance with the court's directions and completion of an independent audit of the rolls.

It also asked the court to frame and issue binding guidelines to the EC to ensure transparency, accountability, and integrity in the preparation, maintenance, and publication of electoral rolls, including mechanisms for detection and prevention of duplicate or fictitious entries.

The plea also sought a direction to the EC to publish electoral rolls in accessible, machine-readable and OCR-compliant formats to enable meaningful verification, audit and public scrutiny.

The petitioner pointed out the present PIL was prompted by serious allegations of electoral roll manipulation as observed in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency, part of the Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha seat in Karnataka.

The allegations, made by Rahul Gandhi concerned the manipulation of thousands of legitimate voters' names and the inclusion of fictitious or duplicate entries, allegedly with the involvement of political operatives and local officials.

"The material disclosed in the press conference includes extracts from the electoral roll, showing identical names in multiple polling parts; and entries linked to non-existent or commercial addresses and other forms of manipulation. Independent citizen verification reportedly confirmed the bogus and duplicate entries," it claimed.

Such large-scale tampering of the electoral roll, if established, strikes at the foundation of the constitutional mandate of "one person, one vote" under Articles 325 and 326, dilutes the value of lawful votes, and violates the principles of equality and due process, the plea added.