Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Vote Chori’ claim strengthened by independent findings of voter roll irregularities, ECI criticised for data secrecy

Rahul Gandhi has accused the Election Commission of India and the Bharatiya Janata Party of orchestrating “vote chori” during the 2024 General election and the recent state assembly election. According to Gandhi, specifically in the 'Mahadevapura' assembly segment of Bengaluru Central, 100,250 duplicate voters were found. Other anomalies include duplicate, fake or bulk registration, misuse of Form 6, and invalid photos. This is the same seat which the BJP won by around 30000 votes. According to him, in Maharashtra, 40 lakh voters were created. He also accused the ECI of destroying CCTV footage, withholding machine-readable voter data and shutting down state election websites.

Are Rahul Gandhi's 'Vote Chori' claims completely baseless?

Rahul Gandhi's allegations are serious and tap into the broader public fear of electoral manipulation. There had been several independent investigations by the news outlets based on the details of the press conference of Rahul Gandhi. He gave an example of the house no. 35 in Muni Reddy Garden, Mahadevpura, which houses 80 registered voters. Several outlets like India Today, The Print, and Deccan Herald independently visited the address mentioned by Rahul Gandhi. The findings raised serious red flags. The house is occupied by a food delivery agent, Dipankar, from West Bengal, on rent. The house belongs to Jayaram Reddy, who once claimed to be with the BJP but later backtracked.

Other independent verifications in Election Commission websites show bizarre findings, like many voters registered with house number zero, multiple voters voting with the same names, same address, a gibberish collection of random letters in the names and illegible microscopic images are present in the Election Commission's voter list. Open source analysis by Peek TV shows that the assembly in Bengaluru Central, which is in the middle of this political storm, has one voter named Gurkirat Singh Dang who is registered in four different polling booths and has four different voter IDs. Similarly, Aditya Shrivastava, a voter, is registered in UP, Maharashtra, and Karnataka.

How did ECI respond?

ECI quickly dismissed all the allegations, calling it a 'tired script' relating it to the previous claims of voter theft in 2018 by Congress leaders that were dismissed by the Supreme Court. It has demanded that Rahul Gandhi should either sign an apology or a formal declaration; refusal to do that means a lack of belief in his claims. The same affidavit-level evidence was asked by the Chief Electoral Officer of Maharashtra and Karnataka. The Election Commission of India cited Registration of Electors Rules 1960, 20(3)(b), a signed oath from Rahul Gandhi.

However, according to the rules, the Registration officer doesn't need to seek a signed oath. Similarly, Section 12 states that any complaint must be submitted within 30 days of the publication of the draft roll. Even if Rahul Gandhi signs an oath, the Registration Officer can just refuse to entertain the claims. So why do ECI need an affidavit if they can just deny it? Is it an attempt to buy time to cover up the mess created?

It is to be noted that these duplicate voters do not necessarily indicate voter manipulation; these can stem from technical and mechanical errors as well as poor voter synchronisation. But the reaction from the ECI smells fishy. Former Justice of Bombay High Court BG Kolse Patil has criticised ECI's response as overly arrogant, called for Supreme Court intervention to hold them accountable.

Why is ECI reluctant to release electronic voter roll data?

The ECI argues that voter rolls contain sensitive personal data, even though they are available publicly in PDF form. Releasing this in bulk will make it easier for targeted political ads, scams and voter profiling. Moreover, historically, parties have used these data to send campaign messages and botcalls. They often cite Right to Privacy judgments from previous cases and lack of a Data protection infrastructure. But releasing the voter data will make large-scale duplicate audits possible, thus revealing the errors or malpractices. This is exactly the kind of audit that will give Rahul Gandhi's vote theft claim strength in spine. Thus, ECI controls the narrative by limiting access to the electronic voter data.