On Saturday (7th June), Congress MP Rahul Gandhi wrote a misleading opinion piece in The Indian Express, wherein he desperately tried to dub the party’s loss in the 2024 Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha election as the result of ‘industrial-scale rigging.’
The article was titled ‘Match-fixing Maharashtra.’ At the very onset, Rahul Gandhi claimed, “The scale of rigging was so desperate that, despite all efforts to conceal it, tell-tale evidence has emerged from official statistics, without reliance on any nonofficial source, revealing a step-by-step playbook.”
Appointment process of Election Commissioners
To substantiate his outrageous claims, the Congress dynast suggested that the BJP government ‘rigged the panel for the appointment of umpires.’
He pointed out how the government removed the Chief Justice of India (CJI) from the panel to appoint the Election Commissioners and ensured its 2:1 majority.
Rahul Gandhi insinuated that this was somehow an attempt to remove a ‘neutral arbiter’.
It must be mentioned that since the first election in 1951-1952 to until March 2023, the appointment of Election Commissioners were always made by the President of India on the recommendation of the Union Cabinet (100% in control of the ruling party).
Following the enactment of the 2023 Election Commissioners Appointment Act, at least 1/3rd of the selection panel has a representative from the Opposition (which did not exist during all elections that were won by Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party).
The legislation introduced by the Modi government put a halt to arbitrary judicial activism and sent a strong message to the Judiciary about the powers vested in the Executive and the Legislature. Not only that, the amendment by the Modi government actually ended the brute power that the ruling party had in the appointment of the election commissioners – a luxury that Congress gave itself for the decades it was in power. Earlier, as explained, the party in power at the centre could arbitrarily decide the election commissioners, it was the Modi government, which diluted its own power (a power Congress enjoyed in power) by including the leader of opposition in the process as well.
While Rahul Gandhi criticises the Modi government for making the process fair, he must also remember that when Congress was in power, Sonia Gandhi, the Super PM, appointed the Election Commissioners despite not holding any constitutional post and power to do so. It is often said that those who have a lot to hide accuse others of what they themselves are guilty of – this adage seems to be an appropriate one for Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party.
Misleading claims of inflated voter registration
Rahul Gandhi also misled the readers of The Indian Express about ‘inflated registration of new voters. He falsely claimed that the number of voters in the 2024 Maharashtra election were higher than the total number of adults in the State.
He had alleged, “Election Commission (EC) data show that the number of registered voters in Maharashtra in the 2019 Vidhan Sabha elections was 8.98 crore, which rose five years later to 9.29 crore for the May 2024 Lok Sabha elections. But a mere five months later, by the November 2024 Vidhan Sabha elections, the number had leaped to 9.70 crore. A crawl of 31 lakh in five years, then a leap of 41 lakh in just five months.”
If we look at the historic data on the number of voters added between the past 5 Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections—without considering the results—the percentage increase in the number of voters between Lok Sabha Elections and Assembly Elections has remained almost the same four times, at around 4%.
It can be attributed to the table above. As it is evident, while 4.26% of voters increased in 2024, 1.31% increased in 2019, 3.48% in 2014, 4.13% in 2009 and 4.69% (more than 2024) in 2004.
Further, when these allegations were dismissed by the Election Commission of India right after Rahul Gandhi had made the exact same noise post the election, it was made clear that Congress was involved in the voter registration process and had access to the lists. No objections were raised at the time.
The EC had emphasized that all political parties, including Congress, had access to the voter lists. In fact, the process was overseen by 97,000 Booth Level Officers and 1.03 lakh Booth Level Agents, including 27,099 appointed by Congress itself.
If Rahul Gandhi truly believes that the voter registration numbers were inflated, he should perhaps question the 27,099 booth level agents appointed by his own party why they didn’t catch it. Or more pertinently, was it them who “inflated the numbers” that Rahul Gandhi imagines as inflated?
As such, the desperate attempt by Rahul Gandhi to link higher voter registration to fraud falls flat.
Rahul Gandhi lies about ‘inflated’ voter turnout
The Gandhi scion alleged fraud in the voter turnout on the election day.
He claimed, “The polling turnout at 5 pm was 58.22 per cent. Even after voting closed, however, turnout kept increasing more and more. The final turnout was reported only the next morning to be 66.05 per cent. This unprecedented 7.83 percentage point increase is equivalent to 76 lakh voters — much higher than previous Vidhan Sabha elections in Maharashtra.”
The Election Commission had debunked this repetitive lie of the Congress party back in November 2024.
In Maharashtra, Voters were in queue at 6 pm in many of the polling stations.
In Jharkhand, there are less than thirty thousand polling booths. In Maharashtra there are more than one lac polling booths. (2/2)— ChiefElectoralOffice (@CEO_Maharashtra) November 28, 2024
Maharashtra Chief Electoral Office S. Chockalingam had pointed out back then that the increase in voter turnout after polling hours was not unusual and based on standard procedures.
“In Maharashtra, voters were in queue at 6 p.m. in many of the polling stations. Even in 2019, the percentages were 54.43% (approx) at 5 p.m. and 61.10% at final [count]. In urban and semi-urban areas, which constitute a large chunk in Maharashtra, a large number of voters come in the evening,” he had stated.
“It is important to note that two-hourly voter turnout information on the day of polling up to 5 p.m. is based on oral telephonic communication only. On the other hand, Form-17C which is given at the ‘Close of Poll’ to polling agents, matches with the final percentage and votes counted. Information in Form-17 C is matched by Candidate’s counting agents while counting,” the Chief Electoral Officer further emphasised.
The ECI had also clarified that the average voting rate is that of 58 lakh votes per hour – which means that up to 1.16 crore votes could have been cast in the final two hours. In the elections that Rahul Gandhi is trying to discredit, 65 lakh votes were recorded in the final two hours – which can actually be considered below average. Despite these pointed clarifications, Rahul Gandhi continues to lie.
Rahul Gandhi deliberately conflates Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha results
The Gandhi scion tried to rationalise the Congress party’s disastrous performance in the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha election by conflating it with the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in the State.
“The BJP bagged 132 out of the 149 seats it contested in the 2024 Vidhan Sabha elections, a strike rate of 89 per cent, far beyond what it has scored any time or anywhere. In comparison, the BJP’s strike rate in the Lok Sabha elections only five months earlier had been 32 per cent,” he alleged by making a selective list of booths where Congress performed poorly.
It is a known fact that electorates vote differently during Lok Sabha election and Vidhan Sabha election. A case study can be drawn from the 2019 Lok Sabha election in Odisha and the Vidhan Sabha election, which was carried out simultaneously.
But the results were starkly different. While the BJP secured 38% of the seats (8 out of 21) in the Lok Sabha poll in Odisha, it won only 15.6% of the seats (23 out of 147) in the Vidhan Sabha election.
As pointed out earlier, the polls were conducted together. In Maharashtra’s case, there was a difference of 5 months between the two elections.
A deliberate attempt was thus made by Rahul Gandhi to paint differential voting pattern across two different elections as evidence of ‘rigging.’
Lies about hiding ‘evidence trail’
The Congress party has a habit of peddling lies and then conveniently shifting goalposts, when met with criticism and facts.
It started out by casting aspersions about Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), then voter turnouts and even addition/ deletion of electoral rolls (which have been debunked by the Election Commission from time to time).
Rahul Gandhi tried to demonise the Election Commission by claiming, “The EC has met all Opposition queries with silence and even aggression.”
In reality, the nodal electoral body has been upfront about addressing concerns raised by the Congress party about the Maharashtra election from the start.
The Gandhi scion further alleged, “It summarily dismissed requests to make available voter rolls with photos for the 2024 Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections.”
As a matter of fact, detailed information on voters for each constituency in Maharashtra is publicly available on the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Maharashtra’s website.
Rahul Gandhi did not stop here but also suggested collusion between the ruling BJP government and the Election Commission in ‘concealment of evidence.’ The Indian Express published his litany of lies without any verification or fact-checking.
Did BJP win in “most of the seats” voters increased?
Rahul Gandhi in his Indian Express article claims, “There are about 1 lakh booths in Maharashtra, but most added voters were targeted in only about 12,000 booths across 85 constituencies in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had performed poorly in the last Lok Sabha elections. That’s an average of over 600 voters at each booth after 5 pm. Optimistically assuming that each voter needs a minute to vote, voting would need to continue for 10 hours. Since this never happened, it begs the question — how were the extra votes cast? Not surprisingly, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won most of these 85 seats”.
First and foremost, one has to marvel at the infinite capacity of Rahul Gandhi to spin yarns that defy all logic. Gandhi claims that it would take 10 hours (600 minutes) for 600 people to cast their vote and therefore, the voter turnout numbers were “inflated” because that would be an impossible feat. Maybe Rahul Gandhi votes in some other country as well and conflated the calculations, but in India at least, it certainly does not take 1 minute to cast a vote. Once a person’s turn comes, it takes a maximum of 30 seconds perhaps to walk up to the machine, wait, vote, see the VVPAT slip and leave. Further, Rahul Gandhi assumes that each booth would have only 1 polling room and 1 voting machine. That too, is not the case. Each polling booth has multiples rooms and therefore, multiple people actually vote simultaneously in the same booth.
Further, Rahul Gandhi’s claim that BJP won most of the 85 booths which recorded an increase in voter registration is also wildly false. There are several seats – 53 of them – where there was an increase in voter turnout and the seat was not won by BJP, but opposition parties.
Take Mumbadevi for example. There was an increase of 5,730 voters here from 2024 Lok Sabha to 2024 Vidhan Sabha. Congress won this seat with a margin of 36,566 votes, which is 6 times the increase in voter registration.
Palus Kadegaon too was won by Congress. Here, the increase in electors was 8,291 and Congress won by a margin of 30,064 votes.
In Nagpur North, the increase in electors was 23,421 and Congress won with a 28,467 margin.
In Dharavi, the increase in electors was 8,653 and Congress won with a margin of 23,459 votes.
In total, there were 16 seats which recorded an increase in voters and Congress won those seats. In 37 other seats which clocked an increase in electors, other opposition parties won.
One has to wonder – is it Rahul Gandhi’s argument that BJP “rigged” the elections only to ensure that 53 seats were won by its opposing parties? Either that, or Rahul Gandhi, as usual, is lying through his teeth.
Conclusion
Towards the end of his vicious, falsehood-ridden opinion piece, Rahul Gandhi who himself have been casting aspersions on the Election Commission suggested ‘public apprehensions’ about the conduct of 2024 Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha election.
“There is apprehension that this election rigging playbook has been in play for years. Doubtless, the examination of records will also throw up the modus operandi and the cast of complicit characters. However, the Opposition and the public are blocked at every turn from accessing these records,” he alleged.
Instead of self-introspection and course correction, the Congress party is back at its usual blame game tactics, conspiracy theories, and outlandish claims of institutional corruption (wherever it fails to win elections).
The development comes at a time when India is fighting Pakistan as part of ‘Operation Sindoor’ meant to avenge the killings of innocent civilians (primarily Hindus) in the Pahalgam terror attack.
While the Modi government has sent multi-party delegations to keep India’s narrative forward, Rahul Gandhi is busy beating the dead horse of 2024 Maharashtra election.
It is crystal clear that the drubbing faced by the Maha Vikas Aghadi (of which the Congress party is an ally) in the Maharashtra elections, conducted 7 months earlier, still haunts the Gandhi scion.