Upping the ante over senior party leader Rahul Gandhi’s sensational allegation that the “large-scale rigging” in voter turn-out led to the BJP-led MahaYuti’s landslide victory in the 2024 State elections, the Maharashtra Congress on Saturday questioned the credibility of the Election Commission of India (ECI) and said that “democracy is under threat” in the country.
Flagging the articles written by the leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha in two national newspapers on Saturday which spoke about the “match-fixing” that took place in Maharashtra during the 2024 State Assembly polls, Maharashtra Congress president Harshvardhan Sapkal said that his party would hold torchlight protests across Maharashtra on June 12 for the ECI’s “failure” to initiate an investigation into the alleged rigging in the voter-turnout data. Addressing a news conference at the State Congress headquarters “Tilak Bjhavan” here, Sakpal said: “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 said.
“The credibility of the ECI is at stake and democracy itself is under threat. To create awareness among the people, we will organise torchlight processions across Maharashtra on June 12,” Sapkal said, adding that he would participate in the march at Gadchiroli. Among other things, the article penned by Rahul Gandhi wrote: “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 dwells 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.
Sakpal 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 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% to 61.10%. But in 2024, the preliminary figure was 58.22% and suddenly the final figure jumped to 66.5%. An 8% surge in turnout has never happened before, especially when earlier elections showed only about a 1% fluctuation. With advanced technology in place, how could such an anomaly occur? The Election Commission owes the public an explanation,” Sapkal said.
Sakpal expressed surprise that after concerns over the alleged rigging of voter turn-out figures, it was Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis who responded to questions meant for the ECI.
“Why are they (Shah and Fadnavis_answering? This only deepens the suspicion that the same ‘vote theft pattern’ used in Maharashtra is now being planned for the upcoming Bihar elections, Mumbai municipal elections and other local body polls in the state,” Sapkal alleged. 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”.