For years, electoral integrity advocates, civil society organisations, and even ordinary citizens have complained about anomalies in India’s voter rolls. Complaints about wrongful deletions, duplicate entries, and sudden surges in registrations were filed with the Election Commission of India (ECI). Transparency groups like the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), through RTI requests, repeatedly exposed gaps in accountability — only to be stonewalled by the ECI (Mid-Day).
Yet, these early alarms were brushed aside as clerical oversights or minor glitches. The Commission maintained that tampering with rolls was “nearly impossible” (The Hindu).
That narrative has now cracked. Opposition parties, led by the Congress, are openly accusing the ECI of enabling “vote theft.” They argue that the manipulation of voter lists has become systematic — powerful enough to swing outcomes in closely contested seats. What was once niche activism has burst into the political mainstream, forcing India to confront an uncomfortable question: can the world’s largest democracy trust its own voter lists?
The Flashpoints: Where irregularities have surfaced
- Madhya Pradesh: Sudden surge before the 2023 Assembly Polls
- Congress leader Umang Singhar alleged that between August and October 2023, 16.05 lakh voters were added — averaging 26,000 new voters per day (The Hindu; Indian Express).
- By contrast, only 4.64 lakh voters were added in the first seven months of 2023.
- In 27 Assembly seats, the number of new voters exceeded the victory margin.
- The BJP went on to win 163 seats, while Congress fell to 66 — leading to charges that inflated rolls helped tilt the balance.
- The State Election Commission has so far declined to respond (Indian Express).
- Bihar: 65 lakh deletions and the SIR controversy
- In 2025, the ECI ordered a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar — a legally dubious exercise.
- The result: 65 lakh voters deleted from the rolls, sparking protests and litigation (Indian Express).
- Analysis showed that in 24 Assembly seats, the number of deletions exceeded the margin of victory in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls (The Quint).
- Opposition leaders allege a two-step strategy: fake voters were inserted earlier and then deleted in bulk, presenting the deletions as a clean-up (Scroll).
- The Supreme Court stepped in, directing the ECI to publish the names and reasons for deletions (The Hindu).
- Maharashtra: Duplicate EPIC Numbers and Suppressed Voter Growth
- In August 2025, CHRI uncovered that a woman in Nalasopara, Palghar district, appeared six times on the rolls, each time with a different and supposedly unique EPIC number (Sabrangindia). This followed an initial investigation by Altnews. As revealing as the multiple presence of the woman on the voter’s rolls was the fact that the District Election Officer (DEO), Govind Bobde, the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO), Shekhar Ghadge and the Booth Level Officer (BLO), Ms. Pallavi Sawant are named against all these entries in all locations!
- Five entries were still active on the list just weeks before polling.
- The Maharashtra CEO admitted the discrepancy and called for deletions — but the fact it persisted until the eve of elections revealed serious administrative lapses.
- Separately, former Maharashtra minister Yashomati Thakur highlighted massive discrepancies in her Teosa constituency. She showed that:
- Voter rolls grew steadily between 2009 and 2019, adding roughly 5,000 voters per year.
- But in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, instead of reaching around 3.2 lakh voters, the rolls dropped to 2.84 lakh — a net shortfall of 36,000 voters once natural growth is included.
- Just six months later, during the Assembly polls, the number jumped again by 12,252 voters, raising suspicions of manipulation.
- Thakur alleged that about 25,000 Congress-leaning voters were deliberately removed from Teosa, while BJP-leaning voters were selectively retained or added. She said scrutiny of Excel-format rolls revealed 14,000 bogus votes.
- In neighbouring Amravati Lok Sabha constituency, she noted that while voter rolls increased by over 2 lakhs between 2009 and 2019, they grew by barely 5,677 voters between 2019 and 2024 — implying that up to two lakh voters had been excluded.
- Thakur claimed that if these votes had not been suppressed, Congress candidate Balwant Wankhade’s victory margin of 20,000 in Amravati would have swelled to over one lakh. She vowed to take the matter to court if the ECI fails to explain the anomalies (Lokmat).
- Karnataka: The Mahadevapura Case
- Rahul Gandhi revealed that in Mahadevapura (Bengaluru Central), 80 voters were registered at a single address, with fictitious details like “XYZ” listed as the father’s name (The Hindu).
- Gandhi said these were uncovered only after his team spent six months poring over ECI data.
- Instead of clarifying, the Chief Election Commissioner challenged him to file a sworn affidavit or apologise to the nation (Indian Express).
- West Bengal: A faulty foundation for the next SIR
- In 2025, West Bengal’s Chief Electoral Officer admitted that parts of the 2002 SIR voter list were missing or flawed — including entire constituencies with no data and thousands of booths with incorrect names (Indian Express).
- Despite this, the EC intended to use the 2002 rolls as a reference point for the upcoming revision, sparking fears of a repeat of the Bihar crisis.
- Opposition leaders slammed the process as “Scientific Invisible Rigging” (TMC) and “partisan engineering” (CPI-M).
- Ground Reality: Bihar’s Pranpatti village
- In Pranpatti, Purnia district, villagers found that Muslim names had been inserted into the voter list — despite no Muslim families living there.
- During the SIR, these names were deleted; one polling booth saw over 45% of its voters struck off (Scroll).
- Locals now question how many elections may have been influenced before these “ghost voters” were removed.
Why these irregularities matter
- Margins vs. manipulation: Deletions and additions often exceed recent victory margins — enough to change results (The Quint).
- Transparency gap: The ECI releases rolls mostly as PDF images, making independent verification nearly impossible. Civil society has demanded machine-readable formats (The Hindu).
- Legal grey zones:
- Section 32 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 allows punishment for dereliction of duty — but only if the ECI itself files a complaint (Mid-Day).
- Despite anomalies, there is little evidence of action against erring officials.
- Institutional credibility: The ECI’s confrontational stance, especially in demanding affidavits from political leaders, has raised concerns about neutrality (The Hindu).
The Turning Point: From citizens to political parties
For years, these issues were flagged by civil society — CHRI, journalists, and RTI activists like Venkatesh Nayak. Their findings were often ignored or dismissed as “clerical errors” (Mid-Day).
The shift came when:
- Umang Singhar in MP, Yashomati Thakur in Maharashtra, MP Rahul Gandhi and others nationally accused the ECI of enabling “vote theft” (The Hindu).
- According to ANI, Amit Chavda, Gujarat Congress president, took a press conference and claimed that their research provided that around 12.5% of the total voters, nearly 6.2 million, in Gujarat are fake.
- Massive numbers — 16 lakh additions in MP, 65 lakh deletions in Bihar — made it impossible to dismiss as routine revisions.
- The Supreme Court’s interim order in Bihar validated long-standing citizen concerns (The Hindu).
- The combination of citizen warnings and political amplification has forced India to face the reality that its electoral rolls — once assumed sacrosanct — may themselves be compromised.
The road ahead
- Data transparency: Rolls must be published in machine-readable formats (CSV) with audit trails.
- Accountability: Booth Level and Electoral Registration Officers must face legal consequences for lapses under the RPA, 1950 and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
- Independent oversight: Parliamentary or judicial scrutiny of large-scale revisions like the SIR may be necessary to restore credibility.
- De-centralise voter system: ECI to conduct only Parliamentary/Presidential elections; State ECs to conduct Assembly and local polls. They should be strengthened suitably.
- Immediate forensic audit of EVMs, VVPATs, and voter rolls.
- Public release of machine-readable rolls, Form 17A/17C, and CCTV footage.
- Rollback of restrictive Rule 93 amendments; restore transparency safeguards.
- Legislative guarantees for end-to-end vote verifiability.
Conclusion
India prides itself on being the world’s largest democracy. But as recent revelations from above show, the sanctity of elections rests on the integrity of the voter roll. With citizens’ warnings finally amplified by political voices, the time for denial has passed. The choice before the Election Commission is stark: embrace transparency and accountability — or risk presiding over a democracy where the vote itself is distrusted.
Reference articles:
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