IS VOTER REGISTRATION BEING SUBJECT TO FRAUD?

Beginning with the Maharashtra Assembly elections last year, Opposition parties have made many allegations regarding manipulations in electoral rolls. The Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, and others have raised the matter both inside and outside Parliament. The Election Commission of India (ECI) has maintained that it is impossible to tamper with voter rolls. Two days ago, it issued instructions for holding Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar for the Assembly elections to ensure that the names of all eligible citizens are included, the name of no ineligible citizens are included, and to introduce complete transparency in the process of addition or deletion of electors in the electoral rolls. Is voter registration being subject to fraud? Praveen Chakravarty and Rangarajan R. discuss the question in a conversation moderated by Sreeparna Chakrabarty. Edited excerpts:

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Mr. Chakravarty, let's start with you. You have studied and written on the Maharashtra Assembly elections extensively. What are your major concerns?

Praveen Chakravarty: The main issue that the Congress and the Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, have raised about the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections is that there was an abnormal, sudden, and almost unexplainable increase in the number of electors. It was a statistical outlier, an anomaly.

The Maharashtra Assembly elections were held just six months after the Lok Sabha polls. A group of people voted in Maharashtra for the Lok Sabha elections. Six months later, while there may be some more people voting during the Assembly elections, you don't expect the number to rise in an alarming way. But that is exactly what we found. There was an increase of more than 40 lakh voters in just those months. It is not the number 40 lakh in absolute terms that is significant. In the previous five years, the total number of new voters added in Maharashtra was only 32 lakh. So is this new increase logical?

Under what conditions do new voters register? When the ECI adds voters, 80-90% of them are either those turning 18 or adults who had not enroled before. Did lakhs and lakhs of people in Maharashtra suddenly turn 18 or decide to become new voters in just five months while they were not to be found in the previous five years? Who are these new voters? Where did they come from? How did they enrol? What documents were checked? Were they verified?