Maha CEO refutes Rahul’s rigging charges with data
In an op-ed published on June 7, Rahul Gandhi claimed that the voter roll for the 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections had been inflated with fake entries.
Days after Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi alleged “industrial-scale rigging” in the 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections — claims that were swiftly rebutted by Election Commission of India (ECI) officials — the state’s chief electoral officer (CEO) has now responded with data, asserting that Gandhi overlooked deletions in the electoral roll.
In a post on X, the Maharashtra CEO issued a clarification on the “misleading” claims regarding the addition and deletion of electors, stating that “Indian electoral laws do not provide for any centralised addition or deletion of electors”.
The post said: “...that there was a net increase of 32.25 lakh electors from the 2019 Assembly elections to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections on account of 1.39 crore additions and 1.07 crore deletions [of electors]. Total additions between LS 2024 elections and Assembly 2024 elections were 48.82 lakh and deletions were 8 lakh. Hence, net addition in electors after LS 2024 was 40.81 lakh. [Within this] more than 26 lakh of the additions were young electors in the age group of 18 to 29 years.”
The CEO added that the gross addition of electors from the 2019 assembly elections to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls stood at 13.9 million, while the additions between the LS 2024 and assembly 2024 elections amounted to 488,200 — excluding deletions.
In an op-ed published on June 7, Gandhi claimed that the voter roll for the 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections had been inflated with fake entries. He wrote: “...number of registered electors in Maharashtra in the 2019 Vidhan Sabha elections was 8.98 crore, which rose five years later to 9.29 crore for the May 2024 LS elections. But a mere five months later, by the November 2024 Vidhan Sabha elections, the number had leaped to 9.70 crore. A crawl of 31 lakh in five years, then a leap of 41 lakh in just five months.”
However, people familiar with the ECI’s process said that Gandhi failed to account for deletions from the electoral rolls — an integral part of the revision process.
An ECI source said: “...the electoral rolls were prepared polling station wise, after field verification by nearly one lakh booth level officers and the information is shared by the agents of political parties. Any addition/deletion/modification in electoral rolls happens through statutory forms filed by eligible persons. Therefore the deletion of 1.39 crore electors between 2019 assembly elections and 2024 Lok Sabha elections as well as before the 2024 assembly elections happened after ground verification, but Rahul Gandhi seems to have not taken this into account.”
In the same article, Gandhi also contended that the number of registered electors in Maharashtra assembly elections — 97 million — exceeded the state’s adult population of 95.4 million, based on government projections. In response, the Maharashtra CEO said: “Regarding the issue of number of electors being more than projected adult population, any population projection through a statistical tool cannot be a basis for stopping or allowing addition or deletions in the electoral roll, as registration of electors is done based on the actual individual forms received from the public, field verification and decision taken on each form by ERO, with sharing of information with all recognised political parties at every step, as per the prescribed statutory procedure.”
The CEO further noted that booth-level agents from every recognised political party are involved in the day-to-day revision of electoral rolls. “[In Maharashtra assembly elections] Indian National Congress (INC) appointed 28,421 BLAs in Maharashtra. No serious objection was raised by any BLA of the INC or by candidates of INC till election results were declared. It was only after the results that INC is raising this issue,” the post added.
