Amid ‘vote chori’ allegations made by Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) based at Rajura in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra on Thursday claimed that “owing to prompt due diligence and action” taken by his department , attempts of bogus voter registration were successfully prevented. On a day when Rahul Gandhi accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of protecting “vote chors” and people who have destroyed democracy, the ERO said: “During the period 1-17 October 2024, a total of 7,592 applications for new voter registration were received. On detailed verification conducted through Booth Level Officers, serious discrepancies were observed. Out of these, 6,861 applications were found invalid due to reasons such as applicants not residing at the given address, applicants being non-existent, or absence of proper photographs and supporting documents”.
“Accordingly, these applications were rejected in due course, and no entry was made in the electoral roll,” the ERO Rajura said in a statement posted on X in which the Election Commission of India and Maharashtra’s Chief Electoral Office was tagged. The Maharashtra Legislative Assembly polls were held on November 20,2024.
“Taking serious note of the matter, the District Election Officer instructed the Electoral Registration Officer and Sub-Divisional Officer, Rajura, to conduct a thorough inquiry into all applications and to initiate necessary criminal proceedings under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Information Technology Act, 2000,” the ERO said. Consequently, Crime No. 629/2024 has been registered at Rajura police station, and further investigation is being carried out by the police. Department. The ERO office has reiterated that due to timely vigilance, 6,861 bogus applications were rejected and thus prevented from entering the electoral roll of the 70 - Rajura Assembly Constituency. “Action was taken suo motu without any complaint,” the ERO said.
At his news conference. Rahul Gandhi had claimed that as many as 6,850 “fake online additions” were made in Rajaura in Chandrapur district.Rajura is one of the six Assembly segments in the Chandrapur Lok Sabha constituency in the Vidarbha region, which has been held either by the BJP or the Congress since 1996. In 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance suffered a setback across the state, he party lost Chandrapur by a massive 2.6 lakh votes. In Rajura, the Congress candidate Pratibha Dhanorkar had a lead of 58,349 votes over former minister Sudhir Mungantiwar of the BJP. The Congress ended up winning all six Assembly segments.
However, the BJP’s Vithoba Bhongle defeated the Congress’ Subhash Dhote of the Congress by a slender 3,054 votes.
It may be recalled that in an article written in a few leading national newspapers on June 7 this year, Rahul had alleged “large-scale rigging” in voter turn-out in the 2024 Assembly and written: “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”. 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.