E-Paper
E-Voter rolls gone from EC website after Rahul Gandhi's presser? Poll body clarifies
The Election Commission of India refuted claims of missing electoral rolls, stating that all rolls are publicly accessible.
The Election Commission of India on Friday dismissed claims that electoral rolls were missing of many state from the EC website following Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's press conference a day earlier, in which he dropped what he termed “atom bomb” of proofs of "vote chori" (vote stealing).
Responding to claims of website outages and deleted voter data, the Election Commission (EC) said that all electoral rolls remain publicly accessible and downloadable.
EC on social media platform X shared a screenshot of an X account post claiming that ECI "has removed E-Voter rolls of "many states from its website overnight".
Calling it "fake news", the EC said, "Anyone can download the Electoral Roll for any of 36 States/UTs through this link: https://voters.eci.gov.in/download-eroll".
Rahul Gandhi held an elaborate press conference on Thursday, in which he presented what he termed as evidence against the EC of facilitating vote stealing or “chori”.
Rahul Gandhi particularly cited anomalies in Maharashtra and Karnataka. He spoke of irregularities like “one crore mystery voters,” destruction of CCTV footage, and refusal by the EC to share voter-related data.
Rahul Gandhi alleged that the Mahadevapura assembly constituency in Karnataka had over 1,00,000 fake voters listed during the 2024 general elections. He claimed this irregularity helped the BJP win both the local assembly seat and the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat.
Responding to Rahul Gandhi's charges, chief electoral officers of at least three states asked him to share the names of electors he claimed were either included or excluded wrongfully from the voter lists along with a signed declaration or oath for the poll authorities to initiate "necessary proceedings" in the matter.
Sources in the poll authority said that if Gandhi is not able to give the declaration he should "apologise to the nation for his absurd allegations".
The Congress leader hit back asserting he has already taken oath in Parliament to uphold the Constitution.
