Maha Chief Electoral Officer Refutes Rahul's Rigging Charges With Data

Maharashtra chief electoral officer on Thursday refuted claims of "industrial-scale rigging" in the 2024 state polls by Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi as "misleading" and said that the Congress leader overlooked deletions in the electoral roll.

- Abhishek Angad

NEW DELHI:

In a post on X, the Maharashtra CEO said 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.