Seeking to mount pressure on the Election Commission of India (ECI) to order investigation into its leader Rahul Gandhi’s sensational allegation that there was “large-scale” rigging in the 2024 State Assembly elections, the Maharashtra Congress will stage “torch march” protests across the State on Thursday over the “stealing of votes” in the polls.
Four days after Rahul Gandhi wrote articles in two national newspapers about the “match-fixing” that took place in Maharashtra during the 2024 State Assembly polls, the State Congress will organise “torch march” protests in various parts of the state to “create awareness” among the people about the foul play indulged in by the BJP-led MahaYuti during the Assembly polls.
To be spearheaded by state party chief Harshwardhan Sapkal who himself will be leading one such march in Gadchiroli district in eastern Maharashtra, the Congress’ protests will demand a full-fledged investigation into the “suspicious” spikes in voter turnout during the 2024 Assembly polls,
In a statement issued on Wednesday, Sakpal said, “The BJP-led coalition came to power in the state by unfair means and stealing votes with the help of the Election Commission of India. Yet this whole fraud is not being probed properly. This is an attack on the country’s democratic system and credibility of ECI is at stake”.
Flagging the articles written by the leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha in two national newspapers Sapkal had said earlier on Saturday, “Despite the Congress rising serious concerns over suspicious spikes in voter turnout and Rahul Gandhi persistently demanding a probe both inside and outside Parliament, no investigation has been initiated into the Assembly poll match-fixing”.
“This is not a claim; it’s a data-backed demand for an investigation. But in his one-and-a-half-hour speech in Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not utter a single word on this. Whatever we are witnessing in the country is a grave threat to India’s democratic framework,” Sakpal had said.
Among other things, the article by Rahul Gandhi published on June 7 had said, “If some earlier election outcomes seemed odd, the outcome of the 2024 Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha elections is glaringly strange. The scale of rigging was so desperate that, despite all efforts to conceal it, telling evidence has emerged from the official statistics, without reliance on any non-official source, revealing a step-by-step playbook”.
Rahul Gandhi’s article dwelt upon the statistics of the voter turnout statistics of the four Maharashtra Assembly elections — 2009, 2014, 2019 and 2024, mentions that in the 2024 Assembly polls the provisional electoral turn-out had risen by a staggering 7.83 per cent from 58.22 to 66.05.
In his published article, Rahul wrote, “Voter rolls and CCTV footage are tools to be used to strengthen democracy and not ornaments to be locked up while democracy is violated. The people of India have a right to be assured that no records have been or will be trashed”.
“It is not hard to guess why rigging in Maharashtra in November 2024 took on such desperate proportions. But, rigging is like match-fixing - the fixing side might win the game, but irreparable damage is done to institutions and to people’s faith in the result. Match-fixed elections are a poison to any democracy,” Rahul concluded.
Following the publication of the article, Sakpal had said that when a Congress delegation approached the ECI with detailed representations, the poll body had “failed” to clarify or disclose the necessary information.
“Instead, the rules were amended to withhold CCTV footage and video recordings, raising serious questions about transparency. If there is no wrongdoing, why hide the facts?” he asked.
Substantiating his claims with figures, Sapkal had said that while Maharashtra’s voter count increased by 31 lakh over five years from the 2019 Lok Sabha, a sudden spike of 41 lakh new voters occurred just in the five months between the 2024 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. This was highly suspicious. In addition, there were discrepancies in voter turnout data”.
“In 2004, the initial polling percentage was 60 per cent which finally dropped slightly to 59.5 per cent. In 2014, it was 62 per cent initially and ended at 63 per cent. In 2019, it went from 60.46 per cent to 61.10 per cent. But in 2024, the preliminary figure was 58.22 per cent and suddenly the final figure jumped to 66.5 per cent. An eight per cent surge in turnout has never happened before, especially when earlier elections showed only about a 1 per cent fluctuation,” Sapkal had said.