Amid allegations of voter fraud in the 2024 Lok Sabha election by the Opposition, the Election Commission of India on Saturday said that the appropriate time to raise any issue with the electoral rolls was during the “Claims and Objections” period ahead of the elections.
“Recently, some Political Parties and individuals are raising issues about errors in Electoral Rolls, including the Electoral Rolls prepared in the past,” the Election Commission said in a press release on Saturday.
“The appropriate time to raise any issue with the Electoral Rolls would have been during the Claims and Objections period of that phase, which is precisely the objective behind sharing the Electoral Rolls with all Political Parties and the Candidates. Had these issues been raised at the right time through the right channels, it would have enabled the concerned SDM / EROs to correct the mistakes, if genuine, before those elections,” it added.
The poll body said that after the publication of the draft electoral rolls, its digital and physical copies are shared with all political parties and put on the ECI website.
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“Following the publication of the draft ER, a full one-month period is available with the Electors and Political Parties for the filing of Claims and Objections before the final ER is published,” the Election Commission said.
“After the publication of the final ER, digital and physical copies are again shared with all the recognised Political Parties and published on the ECI website,” it added.
“Utmost transparency hallmarks of electoral roll preparation”
The Election Commission of India said that utmost transparency remains as the hallmark of electoral roll preparation as per law, rules and guidelines.
It also mentioned that “some political parties” and their booth level agents (BLAs) failed to review the electoral rolls timely and did not highlight any errors.
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“ECI continues to welcome the scrutiny of Electoral Rolls by Political Parties and any Elector. It will help SDMs/EROs to remove the errors and purify the Electoral Roll which has always been the objective of ECI,” the poll body said.
What the Opposition claims
The Opposition, particularly Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, has repeatedly accused the poll panel of voter-data fudging and alleged that there was “vote theft” in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Haryana.
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On August 7, in a press conference, Rahul Gandhi alleged that in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura constituency alone, 100,250 votes had been “stolen” through duplicate entries, fake addresses and bulk registrations at single locations.
“This is Election Commission data. Interestingly, they haven’t denied the information. They haven’t told the voter list that Rahul Gandhi is talking about is wrong. Why don’t you say it’s wrong? Because you know the truth. You know that we know that you have done this across the country,” he had said.
The commission has asked the Congress leader to submit the names of those he claims have been wrongfully added or removed from the voters’ list, along with a signed declaration.
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