Rahul Gandhi vs ECI: Maharashtra Poll Rigging Allegations Erupt

Published : Jun 23, 2025 19:21 IST - 9 MINS READ
On June 9, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, referring to an article that he wrote in The Indian Express, made a post on the X.com social media platform titled 'How to steal an election? Maharashtra assembly elections in 2024 were a blueprint for rigging democracy. My article shows how this happened, step by step.'
These were the 'steps' he listed: 'Step 1: Rig the panel for appointing the Election Commission. Step 2: Add fake voters to the rolls. Step 3: Inflate voter turnout. Step 4: Target the bogus voting exactly where BJP needs to win. Step 5: Hide the evidence.'
He said that it was not hard to see why the BJP was so desperate to win in Maharashtra. He added: 'Rigging is like match-fixing: the side that cheats might win the game, but damages institutions and destroy public faith in the result. All concerned Indians must see the evidence. Judge for themselves. Demand answers. Because the match-fixing of Maharashtra will come to Bihar next, and then anywhere the BJP is losing. Match-fixed elections are a poison for any democracy.'
While his claims were backed by leaders from the INDIA coalition such as the Shiv Sena (UBT) in Maharashtra and the Rashtriya Janata Dal in election-bound Bihar, the entire BJP brass came down heavily on him, with party chief J.P. Nadda calling it a 'blueprint of manufacturing narratives' and the sign of 'desperation of losing election after election'.
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Earlier, while speaking during a debate on the motion of thanks on the President's Address in the Lok Sabha in February, Rahul Gandhi alleged that after the Lok Sabha election, '70 lakh new voters suddenly arrived in Maharashtra' ahead of the Assembly election.
BJP reaction
Accusing the Congress leader of 'cooking up bizarre conspiracies', Nadda in a post on X.com accused him of 'defaming institutions with zero proofs'. Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said Rahul Gandhi's accusations reflected the 'insecurities of a dynast who refuses to accept repeated electoral verdicts'.
But Rahul continued with his charge, this time taking aim at Election Commission of India (ECI) officials. On June 7, he said: 'Evasion won't protect your credibility. Telling the truth will.'
Such controversies are not new to the ECI, but in past occasions, they mostly involved doubts over the integrity of electronic voting machines (EVMs). In various general and Assembly elections, losing political parties have levelled allegations of manipulation and tampering of EVMs.
Doubts over EVMs
On multiple occasions the ECI had openly challenged people to prove that EVMs could be hacked. It invited political parties, petitioners before various courts, and some individuals who had written to it to validate their allegations through demonstrations. But no one took up the challenge.
The allegations and open challenges date back to 2009. However, there has been a steep rise in such doubts after 2014, when the Narendra Modi-led BJP came to power.
In 2024 too, when the Congress won fewer seats than expected in the Haryana Assembly election, Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda said that he had received complaints about malpractices from many places. The Congress went to the ECI with more than 20 complaints and demanded that the ECI match the vote count with voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips.
The party also alleged that the BJP won where EVMs had 99 per cent charge, while it was winning wherever EVMs had only 60-70 per cent charge. The ECI rejected the party's claims and clarified that the battery voltage and capacity of EVMs had no bearing on the counting of votes or the integrity of the devices.
The EVM story
EVMs in India were first conceived in 1977. A prototype was developed by Electronics Corporation of India Ltd in 1979 and demonstrated by the ECI before political parties in 1980. They were first used by the ECI in 50 polling stations in the election to the Paravur Assembly constituency in Kerala in 1982.
Speaking to Frontline, N. Sukumar, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, said: 'The entire debate among institutional malfunctioning in a democratic set-up needs to be understood in the larger context of parliamentary democracy. The Leader of the Opposition is demanding transparency of the institutions. The late evening voting in Maharashtra is an example of how things can be changed in the electoral outcome. Why has electronic evidence not been provided to the people and political parties? The rules and norms are being tampered in a systematic manner to sabotage democracy in India.'
Regarding the allegations surrounding EVMs, Sukumar wanted to know why the government was adamant on using EVMs when the West, including Europe, was adopting paper ballots citing the possibility of EVM tampering.
'It's not just Rahul Gandhi, even other party leaders are demanding the same and also there are movements against the EVM. The change in the composition of ECI itself reflects the manipulative and undemocratic attitude of the current regime. How can one trust the ECI when it is increasingly becoming an instrument in the hands of the ruling party?'
Accusations in Delhi
In January, the then Delhi Chief Minister, Atishi, wrote to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) alleging a large-scale voter scam in the New Delhi Assembly constituency from where the Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal was contesting and demanded an immediate inquiry. She alleged that after the ECI did a summary revision of the electoral rolls, there were a large number of applications to add and delete voters in the constituency.
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'There is a conspiracy to manipulate the election by adding about 10 per cent new voters and deleting 5.77 per cent voters,' she said. Atishi added that the role of the ECI in the matter was also suspect. Kejriwal claimed that several Union and Cabinet Ministers were involved in the malpractice.
The remarks kicked up a political slugfest between the BJP and the AAP. The matter reached the Delhi High Court, which directed the ECI to address the issue.
However, election officials dismissed the allegation of manipulation of voter records, saying that 'mere filling of Form 7 and Form 6 doesn't amount to addition or deletion of names from the electoral roll'. Later, the ECI also said: 'Form 6 [for addition] and Form 7 [for deletion] are carefully scrutinised and disposed of in strict compliance with the norms prescribed by the ECI.'
ECI clarifications
Delivering the keynote address at the Stockholm International Conference on Electoral Integrity on June 10, CEC Gyanesh Kumar said that conducting elections with utmost integrity was a 'testament to our national resolve', while highlighting the country's electoral integrity, scale, and diversity.
The Stockholm Conference brings together heads of electoral management bodies, policymakers, and institutional leaders to deliberate on contemporary challenges to electoral integrity.
Gyanesh Kumar traced the evolution of elections in India over the decades, noting how the system had adapted to increasing complexity while staying rooted in constitutional values. He pointed out that in 2024, a total of 20,271 candidates contested the general election, which was held across the length and breadth of the country using 6.2 million EVMs, reaffirming the ECI's capability to conduct elections that were inclusive, efficient, and secure.
On June 12, in a press note, the Office of Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Maharashtra, responded to Rahul Gandhi's allegations and said that similar issues were raised by the Congress soon after the Assembly election in November 2024, to which the ECI had given a detailed reply.
In the note, Maharashtra CEO S. Chockalingam said: 'Alarming claims have been raised regarding addition or deletion of voters in electoral rolls. It is clarified that Indian electoral laws do not provide for any centralised addition or deletion of electors.'
He added: 'As per the provisions of Representation of People Act, 1950, and Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, the electoral rolls were prepared polling station-wise by 288 electoral registration officers (EROs) spread across the State after field verification by nearly one lakh booth level officers (BLOs), and active sharing of information with political parties including INC, with ample opportunities to file objections and appeals.'
The Maharashtra CEO also pointed out that any addition, deletion, or modification in electoral rolls happens through individual statutory forms filed by eligible persons.
In August 2024, a 'Special Summary Revision' of the electoral rolls was conducted and a copy of the draft and final electoral rolls (in soft and hard form) for each of around one lakh polling stations was handed over to all recognised political parties, including the Congress, for raising claims and objections.
The official said: 'During revision of electoral rolls, booth level agents of every recognised political party are involved on a day-to-day basis. Congress appointed 28,421 agents in Maharashtra. No serious objection was raised by any agent or candidate of Congress until election results were declared. It was only after the results that Congress is raising this issue.'
'How were 48 lakh new voters added in just four months ,whereas previously 30 lakh new voters were added in the last five years?'Praveen Chakravarty, Chairman, Congress' data analytics department
The Maharashtra CEO also said that the data given by Rahul Gandhi in the article about increased number of voters in Maharashtra were misleading. According to him, there was a 'net increase of 32.25 lakh electors' from the 2019 Assembly election to the 2024 Lok Sabha election on account of 1.39 crore additions and 1.07 crore deletions. The total addition between the 2024 Lok Sabha election and the 2024 Assembly election was 48.82 lakh, while deletions were 8 lakh. 'Hence, net addition in electors after the 2024 Lok Sabha election was 40.81 lakh.'
He also said that more than 26 lakh of the additions were related to young electors in the 18-29 age group. On the issue of sharing of voter lists, the official said electoral rolls are revised annually through a participatory exercise. Such an exercise was done in 2009, 2014, 2019, and 2024, and copies of the rolls were then shared with the Congress and other political parties.
Doubts over rolls
Praveen Chakravarty, chairman of both the Congress party's data analytics department and the All India Professionals' Congress, was, however, unimpressed with the ECI's remarks. He said: 'How did the ECI enroll more voters for the Maharashtra State election than its total 18+ adult population as estimated by the Modi government's own report? How were 48 lakh new voters added in just four months, whereas previously 30 lakh new voters were added in the last five years?'
Also Read | How BJP became the dominant political force in Maharashtra, replacing Congress
Professor Sanjay Kumar, co-director of Lokniti-CSDS, said that in Stockholm the CEC talked about how our process of making electoral rolls is the best in the world, but it cannot be denied that the kind of clean electoral rolls needed do not exist.
'This problem is more in cities than in villages, where ghost voters, voters whose names should be deleted, continue to exist in the voter list. The ECI should pay attention to clean up the voter list thoroughly; a clean voter list is needed to hold fair polls,' Kumar said on the 'Lokniti Official' YouTube channel.
Clearly, the jury is out on the issue of voter lists and the larger issue of the ECI's credibility. The issue of election management is likely to result in more slugfests between the ruling party and the opposition and more accusations by the opposition aimed at the ECI in the run-up to the Bihar Assembly election—unless the ECI becomes more transparent.

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