Rahul Gandhi vs. EC: 'Vote theft' charge is dubious but electoral rolls have a problem

Rahul Gandhi has alleged voter fraud

Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, has put the Election Commission of India in the dock by raising fundamental questions about the “dodgy” nature of electoral rolls which have been brushed under the carpet for far too long by both the Election Commission (EC) and the political parties.

Rahul Gandhi’s strident campaign against systematic “vote theft” and allegations of the EC working as the “handmaiden” of the ruling BJP have been sharply countered by the EC with the demand that he give a signed declaration or present his documents under an oath that he would be ready to face punishment if his vote theft claim was found to be false.

The fact of the matter is that it is no state secret that the EC’s electoral rolls – the official list of the voters in every Assembly constituency – though revised multiple times, giving the voters plenty of opportunities to correct them, is flawed on many counts for various reasons. But, no government at the Centre, whether led by the Congress or the BJP, has bothered to make them as “faultless” as possible. They both are equally to blame – more than some inconsequential mandarins at the EC.

Fake voters galore

Now, let’s take the case of Mahadevapura assembly segment of the Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha constituency which Rahul Gandhi has primarily flagged. He has made a claim that out of 6.59 lakh voters in the voter list of Mahadevapura, (which forms a part of Bengaluru Central, with eight Assembly segments) his party’s rigorous analysis showed that as many as 1,00,250 were “fraudulent” voters on various counts, including those who provided fake addresses (40,009 voters), single or ‘0’ as an address (10,452) and the so-called first-time voters (33,692), who were allegedly in the age bracket of 60s to 90s. That, according to Rahul, amounts to a staggering, almost one-sixth of the “invisible and possibly fake” voters who found their way into the voters’ list.

If it’s true, it is simply mind-boggling. But, nobody knows how Team Rahul Gandhi arrived at those exact numbers (he did not release those documents to the media) and it is impossible to know or prove as to how many of them would have actually voted in the May 2024 Lok Sabha election to influence its outcome.

For the record, the statistical results show that Mahadevapura constituency has been a stronghold of the BJP in the last eight elections, four each in the assembly and parliamentary segments. In the 2023 Assembly polls, the BJP candidate won by a margin of 44,501 votes, while in the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP candidate secured a lead of 1,14,046 over his Congress rival.

Despite all the systemic failures, to the credit of the Election Commission it must be said that the EC meticulously releases the draft voter list and final voter list before every election and makes them available to every political party, asking to file their objections if any. In this particular case, the final list was published in January 2024, a good four months before the Lok Sabha elections were held.

Why no public alarm?

The questions to be raised are: If such mass “rigging” of electoral rolls had taken place, how was it that no political party (including Congress) or even a public-spirited citizen raised an alarm even though there was sufficient time?; and secondly, since booth agents of individual parties keep a hawk-like eye on every single voter at the time of voting (350 to 1,200 voters in each booth), how come there were no complaints raised if they detected any anomalies at all?

Questions have also been raised as to why the defeated Congress candidate Mansoor Ali Khan did not file an election petition in the high court of Karnataka if he suspected an election fraud? And why did the Congress party take 14 months to detonate its so-called “atom bomb”, but still it is wary of owning up responsibility for the allegations it is making?

Rahul Gandhi is perhaps unwilling to stick his neck out and provide a signed affidavit to the EC because it would be extremely difficult to authenticate every one of his allegations and the EC’s lawyers would be waiting to tear them apart in legal proceedings. Hence, he has taken a ‘safe’ stand that considering his stature as leader of the opposition, the EC should take his public statements seriously and act upon them in the public interest.

EC needs to acknowledge the reality of voter rolls

From a neutral perspective, the Election Commission must realise that for all the good work it has been doing in conducting free and fair elections, the issues that Rahul Gandhi has brought to the fore are a long festering wound which needs to be addressed squarely, rather than attacking and intimidating a leader, who after all is playing the role of a “messenger.”

The EC must be fully aware that though it periodically undertakes exercises like intensive revision, summary revision, special summary and continuous updating of the voter list to ensure that no citizen is denied his right to vote, it has been unable to remove the “cobwebs” that have begun to pollute the voter list over a period of time.

At the time of every election, it is common to hear stories of hundreds of regular voters suddenly finding their names missing from the voter lists, even when they would have voted in the previous poll. The voter gets annoyed or frustrated, but such instances make ‘news’ for just a day and it is forgotten.

The ‘beat reporters’ who have followed up on such stories have found that there would invariably be a political leader who would have influenced a low level official at the last moment to remove the names of those whom he suspects would not vote for him. Then, there are instances of thousands of migrant workers who would have registered as voters in multiple places as they move, but the EC has no instant mechanism to remove such names where they are no longer voters. Another major area of worry is that the voters who have passed away continue to be on the list long after they are dead and gone.

Overdue reforms

After the alarm raised by Rahul Gandhi, the EC will do well to clean the Augean’s stables for the sake of its own credibility. For instance, since every village panchayat and municipal body maintains the birth and death register, it should not be difficult to use that data to remove the dead persons from the voter list at the earliest. Similarly, the EC could take the help of artificial intelligence to weed out the duplicate votes across the country. The process of inclusion in the voter list also needs to be made far more stringent to prevent ineligible persons becoming voters.

After taking up a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar, where elections are due in a couple of months, the EC has stirred up a huge controversy by deleting around 65 lakh voters, claiming that 22 lakh were dead, 36 lakh had moved out or were not to be found and another seven lakh were left out due to duplication. The EC has admitted that SIR was being held after a gap of 23 years and the same exercise would be extended to the whole country. The issue is now before the Supreme Court for resolution.

A nationwide SIR would require sending lakhs of enumerators from door to door to collect the enumeration forms. As the government has already announced the holding of the Census early next year the EC could consider requesting the government to include its enumeration forms in the survey so that the process can be completed quickly, efficiently and economically.

Once the data is in, the EC should take up a wholesale revamping of the electoral rolls, which is the need of the hour. Also, it should adopt modern technologies wherever necessary to make the electoral process as error-free as possible and rise up to its adopted dictum of holding “free and fair elections” in the country.