The who, how and why of vote chori

On December 17 2022, at 9.11 pm, Suryakant submitted a Form-7 on the portal of the Election Commission of India. Form 7 is used to delete names from the voter list. Suryakant wanted to delete the name of a voter, Babita Chaudhari, from the list in the Aland Assembly constituency, in Karnataka’s Kalaburagi district. To submit this form online, Suryakant had to go through an OTP verification. He submitted more forms to delete 12 voters in total, in just 14 minutes. These are details as recorded by the EC. But here is the catch. Suryakant told the nation, in a press conference held by the Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi in September 2025, that he never submitted any such form. So who did it, using his mobile number, and why did they want those 12 voters off the rolls?

In August 2024, in Kamthi constituency in Nagpur district of Maharashtra, thousands of Form-6s (used to add voters) were submitted online. At the same time, thousands of these forms were also being submitted online from other constituencies in the state. The only problem – nobody knew who these new voters were, how they were being added to the list, and by whom.

It turns out that in Aland, around 6,000 voters were sought to be deleted, and across constituencies in Maharashtra, more than 10,000 voters were sought to be added, both through fraudulent means. While the attempt was foiled in Karnataka, it escaped scrutiny in Maharashtra. The modus operandi, however, was the same in both cases.

A Special Investigation Team (SIT) in Karnataka has now revealed that mobile numbers were distributed through a call centre and volunteers were tasked with identifying Congress voters in Aland for deletion. They were paid Rs 80 for every Form-7 submitted. The plan did not materialise because it was prevented by the intervention of an alert officer and the Congress candidate, BR Patil.

Unfortunately, this was not prevented in time in Maharashtra, despite Maha Vikas Aghadi leaders writing to the EC – in October 2024, well ahead of voting day – with a list of constituencies where voters were added fraudulently. The EC chose to turn a blind eye.

The results are telling. In the Lok Sabha elections held in Maharashtra in April and May, the Congress alliance won 157 equivalent Assembly seats while the BJP alliance won 126. Just six months later, the same state saw the BJP alliance romp home with 235 seats in the Assembly election, with the tally of the Congress alliance reduced to 50. One plausible explanation for this could be that the voters chose the Congress alliance for the Lok Sabha but shifted their preference to the BJP alliance for the state election. But why did this trend not reflect in the voter numbers, then? Votes for the Congress alliance roughly stayed the same, while votes for the BJP alliance shot up by more than 70 lakh.

It is now abundantly clear that India’s voter lists are being manipulated deliberately to skew electoral outcomes. From Mahadevapura in Bengaluru to Aland in Kalaburagi to Shirdi to Kamthi to Haryana to Uttar Pradesh to Madhya Pradesh, voter lists are riddled with suspicious additions and deletions before an election and, almost always, perpetrated by those associated with the BJP or its alliance partners.

Some commentators ask – can such manipulation of voter lists, large enough to tilt election outcomes, happen in a democracy like India? This is a naive question, considering there is increasing evidence that all it takes to sway the results is a few thousand strategic additions or deletions. This is particularly impactful in a country where small vote shifts result in large differences in the number of seats.

As the sordid saga of voter list manipulation continues to unfold, it is time to address the elephant in the room – the EC. It is ultimately the job of the EC to safeguard the sanctity of voter lists and the integrity of elections in the country. If the Commission is truly not complicit, it must come clean to provide digital, machine-readable voter lists so that there can be a comprehensive analysis. By doggedly refusing to do so, by not providing a convincing explanation, and worse, by framing responses with political undertones during media interactions, the Commission has only given credence to the allegations.

With ministers and BJP leaders rushing to the EC’s defence on every charge it faces, it is only rational to conclude that the constitutional body is being turned into an institution that serves the political interests of the ruling party.

(The writer is a Congressman curious about correlations, causes & consequences)

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)