25 June,2025 09:19 PM IST | New Delhi | mid-day online correspondent
Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. File Pic.
The Congress party on Wednesday urged the Election Commission (EC) to provide machine-readable digital copies of the Maharashtra voter lists, along with video footage of polling day from both Maharashtra and Haryana, within a week. This demand comes merely days after the EC's offer to Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, to meet and discuss issues he had raised concerning the Maharashtra Assembly Elections 2024, reported PTI.
The Empowered Action Group of Leaders and Experts (EAGLE) grouping of the Congress, in a letter addressed to EC, conveyed that the party leadership would be "pleased" to meet with the commission soon after receiving the requested voter lists and video footage.
This would enable them to present the findings of their subsequent analysis. "We request you to provide us the machine-readable, digital copy of the Maharashtra voter lists and video footage of polling day of Maharashtra and Haryana within a week from the date of this letter. This has been a long-standing request which should be easy to comply for the EC," the EAGLE grouping stated.
The group further said that, as the party instrumental in establishing India as a sovereign, democratic, independent republic, they are committed to cooperating with the EC to help strengthen the electoral processes. "Similarly, it is in the interest of India's global standing as a cherished democracy that the EC wins the fullest trust and confidence of India's billion voters and its political parties," the leaders added.
In their response to the EC's letter of June 12, the group wrote back to Ashwani Kumar Mohal, the Secretary in the EC. They highlighted that they have been consistently raising these issues through letters, petitions, articles, press conferences, and speeches in Parliament by leaders of the INDIA bloc parties since December 2024. "We have put forth very factual issues concerning the sudden, huge increase in electors and voters for the 2024 Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha election and the inexplicable upsurge in polling after 5 pm on election day," the group stated.
The EAGLE grouping also stressed that it is "irrefutable" from the EC's own data that more new electors were added between the Lok Sabha election held in May 2024 in Maharashtra and the Vidhan Sabha elections held in November of the same year in the state, than were added in the preceding five years between the 2019 Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha elections and the 2024 parliamentary elections, reported PTI.
"This has never happened before and defies basic common sense and logic. Who are these new voters and where did they emerge from?" they questioned.
To thoroughly investigate this matter, the EAGLE stated that any rational person would agree that the crucial initial step is to compare the final electors list for the 2024 Maharashtra Lok Sabha elections with the final electors list for the 2024 assembly elections in the state.
"It is intriguing and puzzling that except to provide these two voter lists, the Election Commission has engaged in all other sorts of responses, media leaks, and calumny. Why don't you just give us the final voter lists as requested? Since you have evaded this for so long, we must ask the logical follow-up question - do you or do you not have these voter lists? In this context, not providing video footage of polling day raises further doubts and suspicion," the EAGLE elaborated.
The grouping concluded that it is "neither helpful nor productive" to deflect from their simple and straightforward requests with lengthy responses detailing the process of voter additions or deletions, or by blaming a political party's organisational functioning, or by claiming these voter lists were provided to individual candidates, and so forth.
The EC had formally responded to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's allegations of rigging in the 2024 Maharashtra polls by asserting that all elections are conducted strictly according to laws, and that candidates had presumably already approached the courts with any issues regarding poll conduct.
The poll panel had also stated that if the Congress leader still harboured any concerns, he was welcome to write to the authority, and the EC was prepared to meet him in person to discuss all issues.
Moreover, Gandhi had previously alleged "match-fixing" in the Maharashtra polls in an article published in a leading daily, to which the EC responded via an email on 12th June, explaining that the entire election process was conducted in a decentralised manner at the assembly constituency level.
(With inputs from PTI)
