'Vote theft in Maha polls': Rahul wants machine-readable digital voter rolls

Politics Politics of India

Posted by AI on 2025-06-24 16:29:19 | Last Updated by AI on 2026-06-19 10:23:02

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The Congress party is alleging irregularities and tampering with voter lists ahead of the assembly polls in Maharashtra this year. On Saturday, Rahul Gandhi demanded the Election Commission of India (ECI) make digital voter rolls machine-readable, with the goal of preventing further alleged instances of vote theft through tampering.

This comes after a media report claimed that between the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and the upcoming assembly polls in Maharashtra, the Akole assembly seat, currently held by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, added 29,219 new voters. The report claims that an analysis of the voter lists revealed a massive increase in the number of new voters in constituencies held by BJP MPs and MLAs, especially in Assembly seats reserved for scheduled castes (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST) categories.

Speaking to the media, Gandhi stated, "In Gujarat, they used a new, completely untested, first-time ever voting system in the entire world, the EC has accepted that there was a flaw in this system... The ballot units, which are the machines from where you cast your vote, have a ballot paper, and there was a flaw in that ballot paper. It was completely untested."

He further alleged that the ECI's own report states that there was a substantial increase in the number of invalid votes in Gujarat, thereby raising the question of whether these votes were invalidated or cancelled by the voting machines.

Gandhi called for the ECI to revert to the old, time-tested, and more secure system of paper ballots, saying, "The EVMs are not tamper-proof, and the VVPATs (voter-verifiable paper audit trail) are not either."

The ECI has responded to these allegations, stating that it is committed to conducting elections in a fair and transparent manner.

It is important to note that these allegations and counterstatements are ongoing developments.

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