Rahul Gandhi repeats poll fraud charge: Rig claims ahead of Bihar Assembly election Asked for a response, Election Commission (EC) sources pointed to their multiple clarifications to the Congress on its allegations

Pheroze L. Vincent

Rahul Gandhi has through newspaper op-ed articles in multiple languages repeated his claims of fraud in last year’s Maharashtra polls.

He shared the allegations on X, saying: “Step 1: Rig the panel for appointing the Election Commission Step 2: Add fake voters to the roll Step 3: Inflate voter turnout Step 4: Target the bogus voting exactly where BJP needs to win Step 5: Hide the evidence.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Rahul added: “Because the match-fixing of Maharashtra will come to Bihar next, and then anywhere the BJP is losing.”

BJP president J.P. Nadda hit back on the same platform, saying: “Step 1: Congress Party gets defeated election after election due to his antics. Step 2: Instead of introspecting, he cooks up bizarre conspiracies and cries rigging. Step 3: Ignores all facts and data. Step 4: Defames institutions with zero proof. Step 5: Hopes for headlines over facts.”

Nadda added: “And, he is doing this because a defeat in Bihar is certain.”

Later in the evening, several Union ministers countered Rahul on X.

Asked for a response, Election Commission (EC) sources pointed to their multiple clarifications to the Congress on its allegations.

Last year, the poll panel replied to the Congress, saying: “The factual position pertaining to enrolment of electors between the period of Lok Sabha Election, 2024 and Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha Election, 2024 indicates that there are ONLY 6 ACs (Assembly constituencies), and not 50 ACs, where total additions were over 50,000 electors.

“Thus, the question of the ruling regime and its allies winning 47 seats out of these 50 seats (factually nonexistent) on this basis does not arise.

“Further, it has been ascertained from CEO (chief electoral officer), Maharashtra, that INC (Indian National Congress) had indeed been informed and copies of draft rolls, claims and objections, were provided to INC in all the constituencies of Maharashtra and that INC representatives indeed participated in revision of electoral rolls at various stages till the finalisation of electoral rolls.”

The poll panel had added: “At the time of counting, data entered in Form 17C is tallied with data in EVM in presence of the counting agents and therefore allegation of gap between voting percentage data released (at) 5:00 PM on poll day and final polling percentage data is superfluous.”

An Election Commission source told The Telegraph: “The process (of updating the electoral rolls) was undertaken under the full glare of… 27,099 booth-level agents by the Indian National Congress themselves and after the finalisation of these electoral rolls during the Maharashtra elections, out of 9,77,90,752 electors, only 89 appeals were filed before the first appellate authority (district magistrate)… and only one appeal was preferred before the second appellate authority (CEO)….”

In his article in The Indian Express on Saturday, Rahul wrote: “The polling turnout at 5pm was 58.22 per cent. Even after voting closed, however, turnout kept increasing more and more. The final turnout was reported only the next morning to be 66.05 per cent.

“This unprecedented 7.83 percentage point increase is equivalent to 76 lakh voters — much higher than previous Vidhan Sabha elections in Maharashtra.”

He added: “The EC has met all Opposition queries with silence and even aggression. It summarily dismissed requests to make available voter rolls with photos for the 2024 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.

“Even worse, only one month after the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha elections, and following a high court order directing the EC to share videography and CCTV footage of voting in a polling station, the central government — after consulting the EC — amended the 1961 Conduct of Election Rules Section 93(2)(a) to restrict access to CCTV footage and electronic records.”

On November 20 last year, polling had closed at 6pm in most of Maharashtra, and at 3pm in the six Maoist-hit or forested constituencies. People in the queues at the time were allowed to vote, in keeping with the law.

Recognised parties are given free copies of the electoral rolls, which are used by their campaigners to contact voters, and by their polling agents to verify voters at the booths.

On the demand from a lawyer for CCTV footage from polling stations, then chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar had told reporters in January: “He will give it for machine learning…. Machines will create so much AI content on social media that we won’t be able to know what is genuine.”

The DMK amplified Rahul’s article by tweeting its summary in Tamil.

On Satuday night, Rahul posted on X: “Dear EC…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-5pm CCTV footage from Maharashtra polling booths.”