Daijiworld Media Network – New Delhi
New Delhi, Mar 3: The Congress has accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of being "complicit" in voter list manipulation and announced its intent to challenge the issue through legal, political, and legislative means.
A group of senior Congress leaders expressed serious concerns over alleged irregularities, particularly cases of multiple voters being assigned the same identification number. Calling it a “grave danger” to India’s electoral democracy, they emphasized that the issue transcended politics and undermined the fundamental principles of free and fair elections.
“This is not just about one party; this is a direct attack on the democratic fabric of the nation. The Congress will pursue all available remedies—legal, political, and legislative—to ensure that such manipulation does not go unchallenged,” the party’s Empowered Action Group of Leaders and Experts (EAGLE) stated in a press release.
The party has formed an eight-member committee to oversee the conduct of elections and monitor the ECI’s actions. The group includes senior leaders Ajay Maken, Digvijaya Singh, Abhishek Singhvi, Pawan Khera, Praveen Chakravarty, Gurdeep Singh Sappal, Nitin Raut, and Vamshi Chand Reddy.
The Congress specifically pointed to alarming discrepancies in Maharashtra’s voter lists, claiming that 40 lakh new voters were registered between the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections—more than the 32 lakh added in the entire five-year period between 2019 and 2024. The party alleged that this surge was strategically manipulated to benefit the BJP-led alliance.
Ground reports, the Congress claimed, showed thousands of voters being registered at single addresses or relocated from other states. Many of these newly enrolled voters, they alleged, overwhelmingly supported the BJP-led coalition, skewing election outcomes in its favor.
Despite repeated demands for an explanation, the Congress accused the Election Commission of maintaining “stoic silence,” further strengthening suspicions of its involvement. The party challenged the EC’s initial defense that voter ID numbers could be repeated across states but were unique within each state. “This claim was false—there are multiple instances of the same ID number being assigned to different voters in the same constituency,” the Congress leaders stated.
They further argued that every legal voter must have a unique identification number nationwide, and any deviation from this norm indicated deliberate manipulation.
“The BJP cannot win elections fairly, so it resorts to electoral fraud in collusion with the Election Commission. This is precisely why the Modi government went to great lengths to override a Supreme Court ruling that sought a fair and balanced process for appointing election commissioners,” the party asserted.
Vowing to fight the issue on all fronts, the Congress maintained that it would not let electoral democracy be compromised and called for immediate action to restore public confidence in the election process.