NEW DELHI: Congress on Friday wrote to the Election Commission of India raising concerns over “grave inconsistencies” regarding the data pertaining to voting and counting processes of the recently concluded Maharashtra elections. It has requested for an in-person hearing to address these issues.
It said that there had been “arbitrary deletion of voters and subsequent addition of over 10,000 voters in each constituency from the final voter lists”.
The Congress in its letter to the EC also said that “questions relating to Maharashtra’s voter data has also been raised by a former chief election commissioner”.
The grand old party also said that there was an “inexplicable increase” in voter turnout between 5pm and the final voter percentage announced by the EC at 11.30pm on the day of polling.
“With this exercise of unchecked and arbitrary deletion and consequent insertion of voters, the State of Maharashtra witnessed an unprecedented increase of an estimated 47 Lakh voters being added to the electoral roll from between July 2024 – November 2024,” the statement said.
“It is significant to note that out of the 50 Assembly Constituencies where there was an average increase of 50,000 voters, the ruling regime and its allies secured victory from 47 of these Constituencies,” it added.
Regarding the surge in voter turnouts, Congress said that the data provided by the poll body showed that voter turnout in Maharashtra was 58.22% at 5pm, which later increased to 65.02% by 11.30pm on the same day.
Additionally, the final reported turnout was 66.05%, several hours before the counting began. The data showed that approximately 76 lakh votes were cast between 5pm and 6pm on November 21, 2024, the letter said.
The letter dated November 29 was submitted by Nana Patole, Mukul Wasnik and Ramesh Chennithala.
This comes after Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge expressed concerns about the reliability of electronic voting machines (EVMs) and called for their replacement with ballot papers. “We don’t want EVMs, we want ballot papers,” he had said.
In the recently concluded assembly elections in the state, BJP-led Mahayuti clinched 230 out of 288 seats, with the BJP winning 132, Shiv Sena securing 57, and the NCP taking 41. In contrast, the MVA only managed to win 46 seats, with the Congress contributing a mere 16 to the total.