Numbers that baffle in Maharashtra.
| Photo Credit: ANI
“The executive Government is instructing or managing things in such a manner that those people who do not belong to them either racially, culturally or linguistically, are being excluded from being brought on the electoral rolls. Electoral rolls are a most fundamental thing in a democracy… Independence of elections and avoidance of any interference by the executive should be regarded as a fundamental right,” said Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in June 1949 in the Constituent Assembly while introducing the Constitutional provision to set up the Election Commission of India (ECI). All of India’s founding leaders agreed with this unanimously. Tomorrow (January 25) is the 75th anniversary of the birth of the ECI — also celebrated as National Voters Day (January 25). Sadly, India’s founding leaders will feel let-down by the ECI and not deem it to be a happy 75th birthday.
The case of Maharashtra
Dr. Ambedkar was prescient in his warnings about electoral roll manipulation by the executive. While he was more concerned about exclusion of voters through identity discrimination, government interference in electoral rolls can also be through a process of mass inclusion of voters to tilt an election — as seen in the recently held Maharashtra State elections.
The ECI enrolled 9.7 crore voters for the 2024 Maharashtra State election. The Narendra Modi government’s Ministry of Health report estimated the entire adult population of Maharashtra (18-plus years), in 2024, as 9.54 crore. The ECI, by its own admission, registered 16 lakh more voters than the official estimate of the total adult population. Even if one were to accept that the government’s estimate is only a projection, and can vary, it still implies that nearly 100% or more of all the adults in Maharashtra were registered as voters for the State election. This is very strange because the ECI neither enrolled nearly all adults as voters for the Maharashtra Lok Sabha election held just six months earlier, nor ever before in any of the other large States. Then, how were more people than the entire estimated adult population of Maharashtra enrolled as voters only for the State election?
Mass enrolment in just months
This is because 48 lakh people were registered as new voters in just six months between the Lok Sabha and the State elections. For context, between 2019 to 2024, only 32 lakh new voters were enrolled. In other words, 50% more people were enrolled as voters in just six months vis-à-vis the previous five-year period. What led to this sudden, and intriguing, rush by Maharashtrians to register and vote in the State election alone?
Clues emerge upon careful analysis of the outcome. The BJP-led Mahayuti alliance gained 72 lakh more votes in the State election compared to the Lok Sabha election. One would logically presume that this gain by the BJP alliance was largely due to voters that voted for the Congress-led Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance in the Lok Sabha election who then shifted allegiance to the BJP alliance for the state election. But that is not the case. Only 24 lakh such voters moved away from the Congress alliance between the two elections. So, where did the BJP alliance get its remaining 48 lakh (72 lakh – 24 lakh) votes from for the State election?
It is not even the case that the BJP alliance got its remaining votes from other parties and independents, since this group too gained more votes in the State versus Lok Sabha election. It is then rational to impute that 48 lakh people who may not have voted in the Lok Sabha election, enrolled themselves as new voters for the State election and voted for the BJP alliance.
Astonishingly, the ECI has confirmed officially that it enrolled the exact same number, i.e., 48 lakh people, as new voters for the Maharashtra election. Is this a miraculous coincidence, a case of divine intervention or executive interference, as Dr. Ambedkar had warned 75 years ago?
What explains the sudden rush of new voters in six months for the State election? Are they real voters? Or are they ghosts? Were their documents verified when they were enrolled as voters? How is it that all the new voters enrolled seem to have voted for just one alliance?
Regardless of one’s political affiliations, to a rational mind, it is amply evident that there is something amiss with the electoral rolls in the Maharashtra election. Perhaps, there are sincere answers to these questions. If so, is it not logical to expect the ECI to release all the data in the public domain and issue clarifications in a transparent manner? But the ECI is conspicuously silent and arrogantly dismissive of these questions. A counter, which includes one by the Chief Election Commissioner, is that if there was such a large-scale addition of dubious or ghost voters, why were the Opposition parties with their war-rooms, not alert enough to catch this in time? This is a duplicitous way to absolve the ECI using the line of a political party’s organisational inefficiencies.
It is unfair and illegal to add vast numbers of dubious voters to influence an election and its outcome. It is the ECI’s constitutional responsibility to run a fair election. This is why India’s founding leaders entrusted an independent ECI with the responsibility of preserving India’s electoral sanctity and not to be reliant on political parties.
Use Aadhaar
The Maharashtra incident reveals the importance of using Aadhaar to ‘unghost’ and de-duplicate electoral rolls and use its biometric verification for voting. Of course, not even a single eligible citizen should be denied his vote, and an appropriate backup process can be evolved for those whose biometric verifications fail. The sanctity of electoral rolls is of supreme importance and is the foundation of India’s electoral democracy. Aadhaar verification of electoral rolls and voting is the birthday cake that the ECI must be given to preserve and strengthen India’s electoral democracy. It is an idea that even Dr. Ambedkar and other founding leaders may approve of.
Praveen Chakravarty is the Chairman of Professionals’ and the Data Analytics wings of the Congress party
Published – January 24, 2025 12:08 am IST