Rahul says more voters in Maha than adults, EC says will respond

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday alleged large-scale irregularities in the voter list for the Maharashtra assembly elections, stoking a political controversy and prompting the Election Commission of India (ECI) to announce that it will respond with details of the factual and procedural matrix adopted uniformly across India.

- Saubhadra Chatterji and Abhishek Angad

NEW DELHI:

Gandhi's Congress was part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) that suffered a humiliating defeat in the Maharashtra elections at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led Mahayuti, which won 235 out of the 288 seats in the crucial western state. The results came just months after the MVA won a convincing 30 out of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in the general elections.

On Friday, Gandhi, flanked by Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Sanjay Raut and Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) leader Supriya Sule, targeted the poll watchdog and said that ECI registered more voters than the state's adult population, and that more voters were added in the five months between the Lok Sabha and assembly polls than in the five years before that.

Gandhi claimed the BJP won the constituencies where voters were added. He alleged a large number of voters from the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and minority communities were deleted from the voter list. "In five years between the assembly elections in 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha polls, 3.2 million voters were added. In five months between the 2024 Lok Sabha and assembly polls, 3.9 million voters were added. Who are these 3.9 million voters? That is equivalent to the total number of voters of Himachal Pradesh. Why are there more voters in Maharashtra than the entire adult population? ... the voters were suddenly created in Maharashtra," said Gandhi.