Staking Claim to the First Spot

Letters to the Election Commission of India, election petitions in court and Right to Information queries—the opposition bloc has done it all since the Maharashtra Assembly polls last year

- Priyanka Tupe

WITH allegations of “vote theft” sparking a nationwide debate since Rahul Gandhi's August 7 press conference, citizens and civil society groups have been questioning alleged irregularities in electoral rolls and the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) response. While Congress workers in Maharashtra have been raising public awareness on the matter with district-level protests and digital campaigns, the ruling coalition has tried to label their efforts as an electoral ploy of the INDIA bloc with an eye on the upcoming Assembly election in Bihar. However, many losing candidates had reported discrepancies and filed election petitions well before Rahul’s sensational presser—during the Maharashtra polls last November. They wrote letters to the ECI, filed queries under the Right to Information (RTI) Act and even filed election petitions as a last legal resort.

On May 16, in a reply by the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) for Nagpur South West to an RTI query filed by Nagpur-based Congress leader Prafulla Gudadhe, who had lost to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and challenged his election in court on January 4, it was revealed that 33,712 names had been added to—and 3,411 deleted— from the electoral roll of the Nagpur South West constituency that elected Devendra Fadnavis in just six months between the Lok Sabha election in April-May 2024 and the November polls in Maharashtra.

In July, the Nagpur bench of the High Court of Bombay dismissed Gudadhe’s election petition on the “technical ground”, as his lawyer Akash Moon puts it, that the “petitioner was not present in the court while filing the petition”. Earlier, on January 1, alleging election rigging in the Nagpur South West constituency, Gudadhe had demanded the entire video and CCTV footage of polling, and complete details of Form-17C, a booth-by-polling-booth comprehensive voting record, from the ECI under rule 93 of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961.