Just a day ahead of the counting of votes in the Lok Sabha elections 2024, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar came down heavily on the "mischievous narratives" that could harm the electoral process during the course of the polls.

He was responding to a query against the backdrop of allegations and criticism faced by the election commission over alleged delay in release of voter turnout, disclosure of form 17C data and the sanctity of electronic voting machines (EVMs).

In a first, the Election Commission held a Press conference on Monday just a day before the counting of votes and claimed India created a world record with 64.2 crore voters including 31.2 crore women participating in the Lok Sabha elections this year, saying this is a historic movement.

The EC said this is 1.5 times of the voters of all G 7 countries-US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada all put together and it is 2.5 times of the voters of 27 countries in the European Union. Counting of votes will start from 8 a.m. onward on Tuesday.

The Election Commission also admitted that polling should have ended a month earlier, and not during the peak of summer.

Kumar admitted that the Election Commission had failed to counter "mischievous" narratives — starting with allegations that the electoral roll was faulty, then questions raised on EVMs and voter turnout, and now the counting processes. "We failed in understanding them [fake narratives], we admit it," Kumar said. "Now we have understood." "There is a pattern, there is a design, I am not saying it's a toolkit. But there is a design," Kumar said while elaborating on the "narratives". He was flanked by Election Commissioners Gyanesh Kumar and S S Sandhu. In a bid to prevent post-poll violence, the EC has for the first time decided to continue with the deployment of Central forces in some States even after the expiry of the Model Code of Conduct period, Kumar said on Monday.

The Election Commission referred to the Supreme Court ruling in February that had closed proceedings relating to the alleged duplication of names in electoral rolls. The court had noted that adequate measures were in place for voters to approach the registration officer if their names were deleted or if the records had any errors.

Kumar said the poll panel had expected fake narratives and "attacks from outside India" during the election process. "We had made arrangements for such situations, I cannot share the technical details, but the attacks came from within the country," he said.                                            

Kumar said after the polling began, another plea was filed in the Supreme Court seeking the tallying of all Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail slips to verify votes cast through electronic voting machines. The petitioners in the case had alleged faulty functioning of the EVMs.

The Chief Election Commissioner alleged that the plea could have given rise to "anarchy" in the country by casting doubts about the electronic voting machines among the voters and poll officials.

"A similar plea was also filed exactly four days before phase one of polling in 2019," Kumar said. "The petitioners could have raised this issue between 2019 and 2024 as well. There is a pattern, there is a design, I am not saying a toolkit but let us understand this," he said.

Kumar said there was another case from 2019 regarding voter turnout data that was raised amid the polls. He said the EC had responded to the plea in 2022.

Till the 2019 elections, counting of postal ballots was completed before the finalising of EVM counting. The EC changed its directions regarding counting of postal ballots in May 2019. While postal ballot counting is supposed to start 30 minutes before EVM, it does not have to be concluded before EVM counting. The CEC said the postal ballot counting process cannot be changed midway. He said in a majority of polling booths, counting of postal ballots typically finishes before the EVM votes are counted.

Listing out "learnings" from this year's election, the chief election commissioner said that polling should have ended a month earlier, and not during the peak of summer.

Kumar said, "Social media meme pages are calling us 'Laapataa Gentlemen'. But we were never laapataa (missing), we were always here." "Now memes can say the 'Laapataa Gentlemen' are back," he quipped.

Among them was a world record with 642 million registered voters, Around 68,000 monitoring teams, 15 million polling and security personnel were deployed to manage the general elections. Additionally, 135 special trains to carry security forces were deployed and 400 thousand vehicles and 1,692 air sorties were involved.

Talking about the re-polling numbers, Kumar said this time only 39 re-polls were held as opposed to 540 re-polls in the previous Lok Sabha elections in 2019. Out of the 39, 25 re-polls were held in Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur alone due to the sensitive nature of the regions. He further informed that 27 States didn't require any re-polling at all.