Here is a list of Opposition claims and EC response
Congress: Allegations of “vote chori” in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. On July 31, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi cited data from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to claim that over one lakh votes were “stolen” in Mahadevapura Assembly segment in Karnataka through five types of manipulation, including duplicate voters, fake and invalid addresses and single-address voters.
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Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar: Submit a signed affidavit to back claims on “votes theft,” else allegations will be considered baseless and invalid. “Give an affidavit or apologise to the nation. There is no third option. If an affidavit is not given within seven days, this means that all allegations are baseless,” said Kumar.
“More than one crore employees are engaged in the election exercise. Can ‘vote chori’ happen in such a transparent process?” Kumar questioned.
INDIA bloc: The Opposition parties launched the ‘Vote Adhikar Yatra’ in Bihar to step up its attack against the Bihar SIR of electoral rolls.
EC: The SIR exercise was aimed at removing all shortcomings in the voter list. The CEC admitted that there could be discrepancies in the electoral rolls and asserted that SIR was the only way to correct this.
Congress: Allegations of duplicate voters. Reports have surfaced of several high-profile people in Bihar possessing two voter ID cards.
EC: A person being present in multiple voter lists does not automatically mean that he or she also voted multiple times. “Knowingly, unknowingly, some people ended up having multiple voter cards due to migration and other issues.”
Opposition: Leaders questioned the timing of the electoral roll revision in Bihar.
EC: It is a myth that SIR has been carried out in haste. The CEC emphasised that it is the EC’s legal duty to correct the voter list before every election.
Opposition: Parties have been pressing the EC to provide machine-readable digital copy of Maharashtra voter lists, alleging irregularities in the 2024 state polls
EC: Kumar recalled that the Supreme Court, in a 2019 judgment, had prohibited sharing machine-readable voter lists as such an act would violate the privacy of voters. “We have to understand the difference between a machine-readable voter list and a searchable voter list. You can search the voter list available on the Election Commission website by entering the EPIC number. You can also download it. This is not called machine-readable.
“Regarding machine-readable, in 2019, the Supreme Court also studied this subject in depth and found that giving a machine-readable electoral roll can violate the privacy of the voter… The machine-readable voter list is prohibited. This decision of the Election Commission is after the judgment of the Supreme Court and is from 2019,” Kumar said.
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(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)
First Published: Aug 18, 2025 6:17 PM IST
