Mumbai: More votes than voters. 

That’s the anomaly investigative journalist Poonam Agarwal has been tracking from 2018 to 2024—discrepancies big enough to sway dozens of seats in India’s elections. 

Now, with Rahul Gandhi alleging “vote chori (theft)” at a press conference on 7 August 2025, Agarwal warned that silence from the Election Commission (EC) is not just evasive but a threat to the idea of free and fair elections in India.

In an interview to Article14, Agarwal called Gandhi’s allegations “very serious”, saying they were a “direct hit on whether we are, indeed, having free and fair elections at all”. Agarwal, 45, an Emmy-nominated journalist with over two decades of experience, runs the YouTube channel ‘ExplainX’ and is the author of the 2025 book, India Inked—Elections in the World's Largest Democracy.

With her investigations over the years focussing on irregularities in India’s electoral process, Agarwal said transparency within the EC had declined over the years. She said the EC’s response to Gandhi’s findings and a series of other investigations into its working was “raising more questions” than providing answers.  

“This is a historic press conference in a way that this is probably the first time an opposition party is coming on record… with granular details, with documents and evidence (of voter list irregularities),” said Agarwal. 

Focussing on just one assembly segment—Mahadevpura in the Bangalore Central parliamentary constituency, which his party’s Mansoor Ali Khan lost in 2024 to the BJP’s P C Mohan by 32,707 votes—Gandhi said his party found 100,250 votes “stolen” in five ways:

- duplicate voters in multiple voting lists

- voters with fake or unverifiable addresses

- many voters at a single address

- ineligible voters categorised as young, new voters.

- voters with invalid photos or photos unavailable.

Agarwal’s first probe of the EC came in 2018, after a tip-off led her to discover that the number of votes polled and counted in the Madhya Pradesh state elections did not match. The Congress, short of a majority, formed a government in alliance with smaller parties. 

From Madhya Pradesh in 2018 to the 2024 general elections, she has found that votes counted often exceeded votes polled, sometimes by tens of thousands, across scores of constituencies (here, here and here). Agarwal said the bigger crisis is the ECs silence—and a creeping loss of transparency that strikes at the heart of India’s claim to be the world’s largest democracy.

Shortly after the 2024 parliamentary elections, Agarwal found at least 140 Lok Sabha seats where more votes from electronic voting machines (EVMs) were counted than were polled.

Before 2019, the EC routinely published absolute numbers of votes polled for every constituency, often on its website, in addition to percentage turnout, allowing a straightforward comparison of votes polled with votes counted.

After 2019, that procedure changed.

The EC withheld absolute numbers in its initial public updates, providing only turnout percentages, the data about absolute votes-polled figures being released weeks or even months later, and in some cases only after public pressure, media scrutiny, or court petitions. This delay—and the absence of easily downloadable, constituency-wise data—triggered allegations of reduced transparency.

In May 2024, former chief election commissioner S Y Qureshi told the Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar (translated here by The Wire) that there was no justification for delayed release of data on votes polled. “This data is in the system in real time.” he said, “Within five minutes of the polling ending, all information is available. Now, in this situation, the Election Commission is accountable for why so much time is being taken to finalise the data.”

Agarwal’s attempts to use the right-to-information (RTI) law to get that data were either met with resistance or ignored. After 2024, the EC technically still makes data about votes polled public but in ways that makes it too late to be of use, difficult to use or consistently accessible. 

Her analysis ties in with broader trends around election integrity in India. In an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court on 9 August, the EC refused to reveal the names of 6.5.million voters removed from Bihar’s voter lists as part of its “special intensive revision” of voter rolls. 

The move comes on the heels of the Commission’s repeated refusal to provide machine-readable copies of voter lists, in order to make it easier to scrutinise it for any potential errors and amid growing revelations that the electoral process was either flawed or being undermined.

The latest examples: 

- A 9 August 2025 investigation by Scroll found that after Gandhi’s press conference, the EC replaced Bihar’s machine-readable list of voters online with scanned images, making it difficult to scrutinise.

- An investigation by The Reporters Collective on 11 August found more than 5,000 voters living in Uttar Pradesh had been included in Bihar’s electoral rolls.

- The same day, Newslaundry reported punctuation marks replacing names in just one village in Bihar’s electoral rolls after a hasty cleanup before state elections. 

“On the voter list of booth number 106, 10 voters are recorded with just a single punctuation mark – “.” – as their name,” Newslaundry reported. “Seven of their father’s names are also “.”. One is a woman named “.” married to a man called “.”. All are between 26 and 28 years old, living together in house number 1.” 

Such lacunae and alleged manipulation have attracted attention to India’s electoral process from academics and other experts globally and nationally.

The global Electoral democracy Index by the V-Dem institute, Sweden, which measures how free and fair elections are globally, has seen India slide from 0.62 in 2014 to 0.4 in 2024, on a scale of 0-1, with 1 being the most democratic. 

A July 2024 report by Vote For Democracy, a civil society group consisting of retired civil servants and academics from top Indian institutes, found a mismatch of nearly 46 million votes between voter turnout data released on the day of voting and the revised data released by the EC a few days later. 

The report estimates that this could have helped the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) win 79 more seats—where the margin was lower than the mismatch of votes. 

A similar research paper, published in 2023 by Sabyasachi Das, assistant professor of economics at Ashoka University, had found evidence that potential “voter manipulation” had helped the BJP win the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In response, the Modi government sent Intelligence Bureau officials to the university to interrogate Das. The university distanced itself from Das’ paper, and Das resigned. 

The EC has dismissed allegations that was partisan, calling Gandhi’s claims “misleading”, and asked him to submit a declaration/oath or accept that he was making “absurd allegations” and “apologise to the nation”.

“Whether Gandhi submits the affidavit or not is his call,” said Agarwal, “But the Election Commission really needs to come out with evidence; just saying these allegations are baseless is not sufficient.”

⁠How credible and how serious are the allegations that Rahul Gandhi has made?

There is no doubt that the allegations are very serious. This is a historic press conference—probably the first time an opposition party has gone on record, holding an event of this magnitude, presenting granular details with documents and evidence… this is historic. I don’t remember, at least in my career, such allegations ever being made against the EC. These grave allegations raise many questions about the EC, which has so far not been able to provide a proper response.

Rahul Gandhi has made a series of allegations. Which of these—if proven—is the most dangerous, in your view?

It is difficult to pinpoint any one allegation because all of them are dangerous overall. This is connected to all of us—the Election Commission is the core of our democracy. If there are doubts about the data maintained by the EC, it is a direct hit on whether we are, indeed, having free and fair elections. Hence, all of them are very important and should be examined very carefully. We also need to remember that he (Gandhi) is talking about just one assembly constituency (Mahadevpura), not even a parliamentary constituency. I have verified some of the allegations Gandhi has made, and I can say that, prima facie, there is some merit in them.

If these allegations are true, what does that do for India’s election integrity and the integrity of the Election Commission?

The whole idea of our Constitution-makers was to keep the Election Commission autonomous so that it could conduct fair, robust and transparent elections. But right now, no matter what issues you raise with the Election Commission or what you ask them, there are no answers. There is a lack of communication. I have been struggling to get answers from the EC since the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. 

When I first started working on stories about a mismatch between votes polled and votes counted, I asked the EC questions about this mismatch. Rather than answering my questions, they removed the data from their website. I found the EC’s response very odd—not normal at all. Earlier, politicians across party lines had a sense of trust in the Election Commission and believed that whatever it did, it did with full transparency. But since 2019, and especially after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, there has been growing distrust of the EC among both politicians and the public.

One major reason for this, which we should not forget, is the appointment of the chief election commissioner (CEC). The way the appointment is happening now—the committee comprises the Prime Minister, the home minister (or a cabinet minister) and the leader of Opposition—means the majority is on the side of the executive. Until and unless the appointment of the CEC is kept out of the clutches of the government… That is why the Chief Justice of India was supposed to be involved in the selection process.

You first found a mismatch between votes polled and votes counted in the 2018 Madhya Pradesh assembly elections and then again in 2019 and in 2024. What were you looking for then, what were your conclusions and how did the Election Commission—and indeed, Opposition parties—react?

The Election Commission is an area where, generally, journalists do not look for investigative stories. But in this particular case, there was a glaring mismatch between EVM votes polled and votes counted. I got a tip-off from a source about a mismatch in the Madhya Pradesh state elections of 2018. I was very surprised because an EVM is like a calculator—it should show the exact numbers. The data was available on the MP chief election officer’s website, and when I verified the tip-off, I found there was indeed a clear problem. The EC brushed it aside, saying it was provisional data.

When the 2019 Lok Sabha polls came, my source and I kept an eye on the data. Suddenly, and I don’t know why, they stopped uploading information about the votes polled—i.e., the absolute number of voters, their gender, etc. I found massive differences between votes polled and votes counted, both surplus and deficit. Instead of giving me a proper reply, they pulled down the data. Since then, they have stopped uploading this data for that period. Again, in the 2024 poll data, there has been a massive mismatch between votes polled and votes counted, both deficit and surplus, in almost every parliamentary constituency except four or five. 

To this day, we do not have an answer as to why these mismatches are happening. The Opposition started looking into the matter primarily during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

What do you make of the Election Commission’s demand for a sworn affidavit from Rahul Gandhi?

(Laughs). I am laughing for the simple reason that I have reached a point where you don’t get angry anymore—you just laugh. Let’s understand the rules. Rule 20(3)(b) says that the evidence tendered by any person regarding claims and objections should be under oath. These claims and objections are largely from individuals who believe their name has been wrongly deleted or added to the voting list, or has been misused, prompting the Election Commission to start an inquiry.

Is the EC saying that he must come under oath and submit an affidavit, and only then will they investigate? He is the country’s leader of Opposition in Parliament and is making these remarks publicly. If the EC believes it is right and that these allegations are baseless, it should come up with a detailed rebuttal, put the evidence in the public domain, and show that it is doing the job it is supposed to. Once they do that, they can even take action against him if they want—who is stopping them? Whether Gandhi submits the affidavit or not is his call, but the Election Commission really needs to come out with evidence; just saying these allegations are baseless is not sufficient.

One aspect that the EC has also pointed out is the Congress’ weakness in catching this. Could a stronger booth-level organisation be able to nip this in the bud?

At the booth level, there is a lack of awareness about these things. All political party agents are supposed to collect Form 17-C (a booth-level form that documents the votes polled and votes counted), but most of them didn’t even know what it was during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls

But for the EC to raise questions, asking why the Congress didn’t bring this up within 45 days of the result and why it is coming now, shows a crying attitude on the part of the EC. Instead, it needs to listen to the complaints, rectify the issues, clean up the process, and say, yes, it will investigate the complaints and fix whatever loopholes exist.

But this lack of awareness, is it equally seen in both the opposition parties and the ruling BJP?

BJP workers seem to be far more organised. Their way of data-collection, recording it and keeping it organised—they have very good systematic ways. Not that I am aware of their methods completely, but comparatively they are much better organised. 

⁠In terms of transparency, the EC has taken a number of steps—from denying any legal mandate for the voter turnout data to be disclosed publicly, to its decision to delete CCTV footage in 45 days. What do you think about the EC’s response to allegations around its functioning?

I recently met a journalist who has covered the Election Commission for decades. She said that when she started covering it, it was easy to get inside—walking into an officer’s room, talking to them, collecting information. But now it has become a closed-door affair. They have even put up barricades outside. Even for journalists to enter, it takes time.

This reminded me of the time I used to cover the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). I can understand the CBI and ED placing such restrictions for security reasons. But the Election Commission becoming closed even to journalists is not a good sign. For instance, this insistence on not sharing votes polled data with the public—why can’t you share it? What is the logic? Just put it out in public. Even after initially declining to share it earlier, they eventually released it many months after the 2024 elections.

Then there is this diktat to delete CCTV footage after 45 days—earlier, you could collect it from the returning officers in the form of CDs. Now, what has changed? Why do you suddenly want to delete it after 45 days?

The EC’s closed-door attitude is raising more questions.

(Kunal Purohit is an independent journalist and the author of the book ‘H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Popstars’.)

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