Electoral roll ‘fraud' claims are false, need proof: CEC Gyanesh Kumar

Hindustan Times

7 hours ago

The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Sunday called the Opposition's allegations of 'vote theft' during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and discrepancies in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Bihar's electoral rolls false and baseless, saying that the public is being misled and the Constitution undermined through these charges, even as it again called upon Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to provide proof of the alleged voter fraud or withdraw his remarks. Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar along with election commissioners addresses a press conference in Delhi on Sunday. (ANI)
At a press conference on Sunday afternoon, the first to be held by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar since he took over in February and the first since the controversial SIR drive was ordered in Bihar, the poll body said that it will not be cowed by political attacks.
The EC's pushback came on a day when the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, launched a 1,300-km Voter Adhikari Yatra in Bihar's Sasaram, to counter what he alleged is 'a conspiracy' by the EC and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to steal Bihar assembly polls.
'When politics is being done by targeting the voters of India by keeping a gun on the shoulder of the Election Commission, today the Election Commission wants to make it clear to everyone that it fearlessly stood like a rock with all the voters of all sections and all religions including the poor, rich, elderly, women, youth without any discrimination,' Kumar, who held the press conference along with election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi at the National Media Centre in Delhi, said.
In an 85-minute speech, Kumar urged Gandhi to produce evidence of the alleged voter fraud or withdraw his remarks. 'There is no third option... If no declaration under oath given within seven days, claims will be considered baseless and invalid,' Kumar said, doubling down on his arguments against Gandhi's claims, adding that those making unfounded allegations should apologise to the nation.
The CEC assured that the EC is working towards making SIR in Bihar a 'huge success'. 'The truth is that step by step all the stakeholders are committed, trying and working hard to make the SIR of Bihar a complete success. When more than seven crore voters of Bihar are standing with the Election Commission, then neither can any question mark be raised on the credibility of the Election Commission nor on the credibility of the voters,' Kumar said.
Clarifying its defence against the Opposition's charges, the EC said that preparation of electoral rolls and casting of votes are two different processes under two separate laws. 'When a voter goes to vote and presses the button, he can press it only once… vote theft cannot happen,' Kumar said.
He accused Gandhi — without naming him but with clear allusions — of using misleading visuals to back his case. 'If someone thinks that he can use a PPT presentation to falsify data and misinterpret facts, then that act is against both the law and constitution,' Kumar remarked.
The SIR in Bihar—undertaken state-wide for the first time in two decades—has excluded nearly 6.5 million names from the draft roll published on August 1.
The matter reached the apex court in July. On August 14, the Supreme Court directed the EC to publish details of about 6.5 million voters deleted during the SIR. A bench of justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi ordered that the lists be made available on district websites, booth-wise and searchable by EPIC number, with reasons for deletion clearly stated, and also displayed at block and panchayat offices. The court asked the ECI to publicise this widely in local newspapers, TV, radio, and social media, and to include Aadhaar as valid ID for claims. The court also called transparency essential and set August 19 as the deadline for compliance, with a review due on August 22.
Opposition leaders have flagged the removal of 2.2 million names as 'deaths' in just six months.
To this, Kumar said: 'A Special Intensive Revision was last conducted 20 years ago. Since then, only summary revisions have taken place. The deaths were those unreported to the EC in the last 20 years, not in six months.'
On allegations of voters being listed under 'house number 0,' Kumar said this was 'an inclusionary move'.
'There are people who stay under bridges, near lampposts, and in unauthorised colonies. The poll body tries to not leave out any voter and assigns them addresses. Nationality, proximity to the booth and age of 18 years were the criteria for inclusion, not a formal address,' he said.
He warned Opposition leaders against exposing voters' personal data. 'They showed electors' details in public. Should the Election Commission share CCTV videos of any voter, including their mothers, daughters-in-law, daughters?' Kumar said. Speaking about the controversy over RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav allegedly holding two voter EPICs (Elector Photo Identity Cards), the CEC said that duplicate EPICs can happen in two ways.
'One, that a person in West Bengal has one EPIC number and another person in Haryana has the same number. About three lakh such cases were found and corrected earlier this year. The second type comes when the same person's name is in the voter list at more than one place with different EPICs. Before 2003, when deletions were not centrally tracked, many such names remained.'
To be sure, the ECI in May had declared that the voter database had been 'cleaned' of dual EPICs.
However, he conceded the risks of a hurried clean-up. 'If this is done in a hurry, then any voter's name can be deleted wrongly. Someone else's name will be deleted in your place. We agree there is an issue but we will have to take time and caution to resolve this.'
Kumar accused parties of willfully spreading doubt. 'It is a matter of great concern that a few political parties have made allegations of vote chori despite their own booth-level agents having received and attested the corrected rolls in the first stage of SIR,' he said. 'This means either local voices are not reaching national leaders, or there is a deliberate attempt to confuse voters.'
The CEC said that 160,000 Booth Level Agents have prepared the draft voter list in Bihar and till now, the Commission has received '28,370 complaints from ordinary voters, not political parties.'
This contradicted Yadav's claim, made in a BBC interview, that booth-level agents had lodged hundreds of objections from political parties ignored by the EC. Appealing directly to all 12 recognised parties in Bihar, Kumar said: 'File objections by September 1. After that, no complaints will be entertained.'
The Commission also sought to showcase its speed in complying with last week's Supreme Court directive. 'We created district-level portals within 56 hours,' Kumar said, adding that voters can now check deletion status online.
When asked about the data regarding the validation enumeration forms and illegal immigrants, Kumar said: 'Enquiries are still being conducted with regards to the presence of foreign immigrants and it would be too premature to comment on the data on enumeration forms validation as the process has reached the ERO (Electoral Registration Officer) level as of now, post which the DM and the CEO will be stepping in.'
Responding to the EC's press conference, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh said that it is for the first time that 'new' ECI was speaking instead of 'planted sources'.
'Today, the Election Commission of India held a press conference. This was the first time this 'new' ECI was speaking directly and not planting through sources... All that matters now is simply this: will the ECI implement, in letter and spirit, the Supreme Court's orders of August 14th, 2025, on the Bihar SIR process? It is constitutionally bound to do so. The nation is waiting and watching,' Ramesh wrote on X.