Bengaluru: Tampering of electoral rolls. The sabotage of the voting process. The manipulation of the counting of votes.
These are the three broad concerns emerging from not just Indian National Congress's ‘vote chori (theft)’ allegations over the past two months, but from evidence gathered over the last seven years, according to an Article 14 analysis.
With the latest allegation—that of the Election Commission of India (ECI) adding nearly half a million new voters between 1 and 30 September 2025 to the “final” revised rolls in Bihar without any explanation so far—the overall thrust of such manipulations, if they occurred, is to give an edge to parties and alliances in power nationally or in the states, turning losses to wins, and wins to sweeps, particularly in close contests.
On 28 September, The Reporters Collective, an independent website, reported “repeated attempts” to delete about 80,000 Muslim voters from the rolls in the Dhaka assembly constituency, claiming they were not Indian citizens.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the 2020 elections in Dhaka by 10,114 votes. The ECI made no official comment and took no action against those—two sources appeared linked to the BJP—who tried deleting Muslim voters.
In recent years, the ECI, a powerful, non-partisan Constitutional body, has generally blocked voter scrutiny of the conduct of elections, stonewalled questions, and failed to comprehensively and adequately address allegations of manipulations. Meanwhile, public trust in the ECI has fallen over the past six years.
These vulnerabilities create room for doubt at the very foundation of electoral democracy—the idea of one-person-one-vote.
The tampering of electoral rolls involves allegations of both fraudulent addition of bogus electors and the targeted deletion of actual electors. For the sake of terminological clarity, ‘electors’ hereafter refers to all those included in the rolls who are eligible to vote, while ‘voters’ refers to the electors who actually vote.
This analysis focuses on so-called heartland states, and not border states and former states where electoral integrity has been difficult for much longer in the shadow of insurgency and counter-insurgency.
Addressing suspicions that India’s electoral system is under threat is particularly important because state elections are due over the next year in Bihar, Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and the union territory of Puducherry. Sixteen more states will go to the polls in 2027 and 2028, leading up to Lok Sabha elections in 2029.
Growing Suspicions Of Fraud
One recent example of the controversies that the ECI is embroiled in relates to concerns of fraudulent additions after a surge in the enrollment of new electors in Maharashtra between June and October 2024.
In the Lok Sabha elections 2024, the BJP-led alliance won 35% or 17 of 48 seats in the state, but five months later swept the assembly elections, winning 235 of 288 seats or 82%.
In these five months, the state’s electoral roll swelled by 4.08 million, defying demographic trends. This led the Congress and other opposition parties to suspect fraudulent addition of bogus electors.
Subsequent analyses of state-wide patterns and ground reportage further underscored suspicions of systematic tampering in certain assembly constituencies, which if confirmed, would constitute rigging.
Another mode of tampering of rolls involves targeted deletion of genuine electors outside of their knowledge—as Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi alleged in the case of the Aland assembly constituency in Karnataka in his press conference of 18 September 2025.
The News Minute, an independent media website, too, had found a similar attempt by the BJP to delete electors, particularly Muslims and Dalits, in Bengaluru’s Shivajinagar assembly constituency in the months leading up to the Karnataka assembly elections of 2023.
Manipulation of the voting process has taken the form of intimidation and suppression of electors on polling days, reported across many states and many elections, with fingers pointing at different ruling political parties, including the BJP and the TMC.
On many occasions, minority and caste-oppressed electors have been at the receiving end of such intimidation.
Vote manipulation can also take the form of the same elector voting multiple times in an election as has been alleged in Panvel, Maharashtra in the assembly elections 2024, and inexplicable surges in voter turn-out around the time of and even after close of polling. Recent examples of the latter trend include complaints by the Biju Janata Dal in Odisha in 2024 and by the Congress in Maharashtra assembly elections 2024.
Third, there are the concerns related to counting of votes—with documented cases of votes counted not tallying with votes polled, and manipulation of how postal votes are counted. A recent glaring example of such manipulation is the case of Gujarat’s former education minister and BJP leader Bhupendrasinh Chudasama.
In May 2020, the Gujarat High Court voided his election victory in the 2017 Assembly polls, finding merit in the rival (Congress) candidate Ashwin Rathod’s complaint of a manipulated count of postal votes.
The Supreme Court intervened two days later and stayed the High Court order, effectively allowing Chudasama a full term.
Finally, questions around the sanctity of electronic voting also fall in this class of vulnerabilities.
Corroding The Foundation
In the backdrop of the controversial special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, soon to be launched nationally, these escalating concerns and lingering questions raise the spectre of electoral sabotage that can corrode the very foundation of constitutional democracy.
Free and fair elections are a key element of a democracy, an institutional mechanism that allows people to vote political parties into and out of power. They are an expression of a government of, by, and for the people. This is why the metaphor of ‘festivals’ for elections, popularized by the BJP but deployed by others too, is fundamentally misleading.
Rather than mirth, elections call for robust vigilance and utmost transparency.
It is on account of alert and curious journalists, researchers, civil society groups, and citizens, that many of the concerns, being echoed today by Congress and other political parties, have come to light over the past seven years.
The Latest: Tampered Rolls
There have been rumblings from different corners of the country over the past year about allegations of systematic manipulation of electoral rolls in a way that favors the BJP and allies, for instance, from Kerala, Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Karnataka, and most recently Bihar.
In 2018, there was a study suggesting mass exclusion of Muslims and also marginalised castes across the country. More recently, there have been similar complaints in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, and even a public interest litigation before the Supreme Court by the engineer Srinivas Kodali alleging opaque, large-scale deletion of electors in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
The economist Sabyasachi Das conducted a statistical study of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections that found evidence suggestive (without being conclusive) of both targeted deletion of Muslim names from the rolls and discrimination against Muslim electors on polling days in closely contested seats that the BJP won.
Over the past year, the controversy has expanded to include the potentially fraudulent addition of duplicate and bogus electors to the rolls—most noticeably in Maharashtra just before the state assembly elections of November 2024.
Maharashtra is one of the most politically consequential states in India, and one of the nerve centers for fundraising by political parties.
In the five months between the Lok Sabha and state assembly elections of 2024, the electoral roll swelled by more than 4 million new electors, breaking the previous record from 2009.
The surge, timed in narrow pre-poll windows and skewed toward select constituencies, was largely in regions ultimately swept by the BJP-led alliance.
Defying Demography
The surge defied demographic trends: There were only about 872,000 first-time voters who turned 18 after the Lok Sabha elections of 2024, and there was nothing to suggest a sizable uptick of in-migration into the state between June and October 2024.
Since 2009, elections in Maharashtra have coincided with those in Haryana in October. In 2024, the ECI delayed elections by a month, citing security deployments in Jammu & Kashmir and monsoon-related delays in updating electoral rolls in Maharashtra.
Even before the poll was announced, contesting opposition candidates in a few districts complained about fraudulent addition of electors. An FIR was even registered in Tuljapur assembly constituency in October 2024 on the basis of a 21 August 2024 complaint by the Lok Sabha MP and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Omprakash Rajenimbalkar.
In parallel, Balaram Patil of the Peasants and Workers Party of India moved the Bombay High Court in September 2024 with the plea for directions to the ECI to act on his complaint about tens of thousands of duplicate electors in Raigad and Thane districts.
A similar petition was also filed by Eknath Shinde’s breakaway Shiv Sena’s Chandrakant Patil concerning the Muktainagar assembly constituency in Jalgaon district. Nothing tangible came of these complaints.
Subsequent investigations found many instances of large-scale additions to electoral rolls in the Nagpur South West assembly constituency, without the mandatory verifications by booth level officers and electoral registration officers—this is the constituency won by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
Balaram Patil, who lost the elections in Panvel assembly constituency by a margin of 51,091 votes, also uncovered over 11,000 cases of bogus voting in Panvel.
Rahul Gandhi’s Exposes
This context frames Rahul Gandhi’s two press conferences.
The first one on 7 August 2025 focused on Mahadevapura assembly segment in the Bangalore Central parliamentary constituency. Gandhi presented a detailed analysis alleging over 100,000 suspicious or fraudulent entries in the electoral rolls for the Lok Sabha elections 2024—including duplicate voters, fake or invalid addresses, bulk voter registrations at a single address, invalid or indistinguishable photos, and misuse of Form 6, through which new electors can enroll. Gandhi also found at least one instance of an elector actually voting twice.
The second press conference on 18 September, was more significant because it outlined a potential modus operandi for electoral roll manipulation.
Gandhi claimed that an unknown person or agency attempted to delete by fraud thousands of legitimate, potentially Congress-leaning electors in the Aland assembly constituency of Karnataka ahead of the 2023 state elections.
He also said that a separate attempt was made to add by fraud thousands of new electors on the rolls of Rajura assembly constituency in Maharashtra ahead of the 2024 state elections. Both constituencies tend to see a close contest between the Congress and the BJP.
In previous allegations, it has not been clear whether bogus Forms 6 were being filed online or offline. Applicants use Form 6 either to enroll as an elector for the first time or to enroll into a new constituency after moving.
For instance, the investigation by Newslaundry in Nagpur South West assembly constituency only notes that Forms 6 in bulk were handed over to electoral registration officers by officials at the district collectorate, who in turn may have received them online or offline.
In Rajura, however, Gandhi alleged that bogus Form 6 applications were filed online.
The Aland Fiddle
Gandhi’s expose regarding Aland was even more serious—it highlighted electronic, potentially algorithmic, filing of Forms 7 by an unknown agency or person to delete the names of legitimate electors by fraud.
Form 7 allows applicants to apply for the deletion of their own name from the rolls; object to the inclusion of another person in the electoral rolls; and apply for the deletion of another person from the rolls.
Effectively, Gandhi alleged that there was a partisan, targeted attempt at deleting electors perceived to be Congress supporters. He also claimed that the ECI was not cooperating with the Karnataka Criminal Investigation Department’s (CID) probe into the attempted deletion in Aland, and was withholding crucial information that would allow the CID to trace the culprits.
Any person can create an online account with the ECI’s Voters’ Services Portal with a mobile number and then electronically file Form 6 for themselves or Form 7 to object to or delete the name of another elector.
But applicants can only file Form 7 to strike off a name that is included in the same part of the roll as their own names. The CID has reportedly found evidence that hundreds of sim cards obtained with fake ids were used to create accounts and file fraudulent Forms 7, impersonating existing electors on the respective parts of the roll.
That investigation is stalled because the ECI, Gandhi claimed, is not responding to requests for other technical details that would help track down those who submitted bogus Forms 7.
The Abdication
A 27 September expose by BBC Marathi from Rajura, too, identified attempts at fraudulent deletions and additions through online filing of forms. BBC Marathi also interviewed an applicant, in whose name a Form 7 was filed to wrongfully delete another elector.
BBC Marathi contacted him on the basis of his details listed on an FIR, even as the police had not managed to find him in 11 months. This man claimed that he himself did not file the Form 7 online, but shared the associated one-time-password with someone. He refused to identify who that someone was.
The ECI responded to Gandhi by calling his allegations “incorrect and baseless”. It also claimed that FIRs had been registered in Aland and Rajura on its authority, once these attempts came to light, and that the attempts in both assembly constituencies were foiled.
Gandhi never claimed that the attempts had succeeded—the subterfuge in Aland came to light because of an alert booth-level officer.
Gandhi’s main contentions across both the press conferences is that electoral rolls are being tampered with—through bogus additions and partisan deletions—to swing elections towards BJP victories, and that the ECI was turning a blind eye, if not actively protecting fraudsters.
In response to BBC Marathi, ECI spokesperson Ravikant Dwivedi claimed that ground-level staff, specifically the electoral registration officer (ERO) in each assembly constituency, had all the information needed for investigations and that it was “baseless and wrong” to demand answers from the ECI.
This is an abdication of responsibility, since it is the ECI that owns the Voters’ Services Portal, and has access to technical details and logs of online submission of forms.
Article 324 of the Constitution holds the ECI responsible for the “superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls” for parliamentary and state assembly elections.
The Changes
Even as the ECI denied Gandhi’s allegations of 18 September, it made changes to the Voters’ Services Portal, now requiring Aadhaar-linked phones to apply for inclusion or deletion.
This new requirement of Aadhaar-linking neither addresses doubts nor questions, and appears odd, given the well-known problems with Aadhaar cards, and given that the ECI refused to recognise Aadhaar as a document for enrollment in the Bihar SIR, until the Supreme Court ordered it.
Even as Gandhi continues to reiterate his demand that the ECI cooperate with the stalled Karnataka CID probe, a fresh controversy has emerged in Bihar with the publication of the final electoral rolls on 30 September.
With 1 September as the deadline, about 1.69 million applications were filed for inclusion in the rolls in the month of August. Yet, the final published rolls indicate an addition of 2.15 million new electors—a difference of nearly half a million.
Pawan Khera, chairman, media and publicity department of the All India Congress Committee, asked on 1 October, “Who are these [460,000] ghost-voters who were added without ever applying for inclusion?”
The ECI has not responded so far.
Shielding Election Commissioners
The big picture emerging from the latest controversy across Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Bihar—and building on concerns that go back at least to 2018—highlights vulnerabilities at all three crucial steps of elections: the sanctity of the electoral rolls, the integrity of the voting process, and the fairness of the counting of votes.
To address these concerns, opposition parties as well as civil society groups, such as the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), have demanded public disclosure of election papers: statutory forms indicating how many voted in a particular polling booth and so on; disclosure of CCTV footage of polling booths; a public audit of the electronic voting machine; machine-readable electoral rolls; and 100% verification of voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT).
In December 2023, the Modi government effectively assumed majority power to appoint election commissioners, with the passage of the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act. This law, for the first time, also offered broad immunity to election commissioners from civil and criminal proceedings under section 16:
“Notwithstanding anything contained in any other law for the time being in force, no Court shall entertain or continue any civil or criminal proceedings against any person who is or was a Chief Election Commissioner or an Election Commissioner for any act, thing or word, committed, done or spoken by him when, or in the course of acting or purporting to act in the discharge of his official duty or function.”
This is more immunity than enjoyed by judges and even the President of India and governors of states.
Section 3 of the Judges (Protection) Act, 1985 shields judges from civil and criminal proceedings similar to Election Commissioners, but does NOT bar central and state governments, the Supreme and High Courts, or “any other authority under any law for the time being in force to take such action (whether by way of civil, criminal, or departmental proceedings or otherwise) against any person who is or was a Judge”.
Similarly, Article 361 of the Constitution shields persons serving as President and governors only while they hold office.
Yet, the ECI has denied all demands for accountability and transparency.
Changing Or Violating Rules
In December 2024, the Punjab & Haryana High Court ordered the ECI to release videography, CCTV footage, and election papers from Haryana assembly elections 2024 to the petitioner, advocate Mehmood Pracha.
Days later, the Modi government hastily amended the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, to limit public access to election papers. More recently, even as the ECI denies machine-readable rolls, The Reporters’ Collective found that the ECI had shared electors’ data with the Telangana government around 2019, which in turn provided access to private companies.
With election commissioners appointed by the union government enjoying unprecedented immunity, and failing the test of non-partisanship and independence, the ADR and other groups challenged the 2023 Act before the Supreme Court.
The first petition was filed in January 2024. When the case was last heard on 14 May 2025, the Supreme Court adjourned the hearing, saying it did not have the time and ordered the case to be listed on 24 July 2025.
There has been no hearing since.
(Aniket Aga is a researcher and teacher.)
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