Rahul Gandhi says alleged ‘match-fixing’ in Maharashtra polls ‘blueprint for rigged democracy’

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday reiterated allegations that there was “match-fixing” in the Maharashtra Assembly elections held in November.

The state polls were a “blueprint for rigging democracy”, Gandhi claimed on social media.

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti alliance had defeated the Maha Vikas Aghadi, which includes the Congress, in the polls.

“It’s not hard to see why the BJP was so desperate in Maharashtra,” Gandhi said. “But rigging is like match-fixing – the side that cheats might win the game, but damages institutions and destroy public faith in the result.”

In the social media post, Gandhi also shared a column he wrote in The Indian Express on Saturday. In the article, Gandhi alleged that there had been an “industrial-scale rigging involving the capture of our national institutions”.

The outcome of the Maharashtra polls was “glaringly strange”, Gandhi said, adding that the scale of the alleged rigging was “so desperate that, despite all efforts to conceal it, tell-tale evidence has emerged from official statistics, without reliance on any nonofficial source…”

A “step-by-step playbook” had revealed the rigging of the polls, claimed the Opposition leader.

Gandhi said that the contentious 2023 Election Commissioners Appointment Act had ensured that the election commissioners were “effectively chosen” by the prime minister and the Union home minister as they can outvote the leader of the Opposition in the appointment panel.

After the Act was passed in December 2023, the appointment of election commissioners is done by the selection committee.

The panel consists of the prime minister (as the chairperson), the leader of the Opposition or the single-largest Opposition party in the Lok Sabha and a Union Cabinet minister nominated by the prime minister (currently Union Home Minister Amit Shah).

This arrangement was challenged in the Supreme Court, where the matter is pending.

The 2023 law to appoint election commissioners did away with an arrangement put in place by a Supreme Court judgement in March 2023 that had formed a panel consisting of the prime minister, the leader of the Opposition and the chief justice of India. The court had said at the time that this committee would remain operative till Parliament came up with a law for the appointment of election commissioners.

The Supreme Court-mandated committee had been formed to shield the Election Commission from executive influence. Before this judgement, appointments to the commission were made at the sole discretion of the Union government.

Gandhi said on Saturday: “The decision to place a Cabinet minister instead of the chief justice [of India] on the selection committee does not pass the smell test.”

He added that the second step in rigging the polls had been to allegedly inflate the voter list with fake electors.

The Opposition leader was reiterating claims his party had made in February. The Congress had at the time urged the Election Commission to explain how the number of registered voters (9.7 crore) for the Maharashtra Assembly polls was more than the adult population of the state (9.5 crore).

It also asked the poll panel to share the state’s electoral rolls for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the Assembly polls held five months apart. The general election took place in April and May 2024, followed by the state polls in November.

The Maharashtra voter turnout had also been inflated, Gandhi claimed in his article on Saturday.

He claimed that the turnout when the polling closed at 5 pm was 58.2%, which “kept increasing”, and the final number reported the next morning was 66.05%. “This unprecedented 7.83 percentage point increase is equivalent to 76 lakh voters – much higher than previous Vidhan Sabha elections in Maharashtra,” he added.

Gandhi said that the alleged additional voters were targeted in only about 12,000 booths in 85 constituencies where the BJP had performed poorly in the Lok Sabha polls. Maharashtra has 288 Assembly constituencies.

In November, the Election Commission dismissed the Congress’ earlier allegations of discrepancies in polling data and the draft electoral rolls of the Maharashtra polls.

The Opposition leader also alleged that the Election Commission had tried to “conceal the evidence trail”. He cited the Union government’s decision to amend the 1961 Conduct of Election Rules to restrict access to security camera footage and electronic records of polling.

As first reported by Scroll, the Union government on December 20 amended Rule 93(2)(a) of the rules, which stated that “all other papers relating to the election shall be open to public inspection”.

The amended rule says: “All other papers as specified in these rules relating to the election shall be open to public inspection.”

With this change – notified by the Union Ministry of Law and Justice, in consultation with the Election Commission – not all poll-related papers can be inspected by the public. Only those papers specified in the Conduct of Election Rules can be scrutinised.

Courts, too, would also not be able to direct the poll panel to provide all election-related papers for public scrutiny.

The Congress has challenged the change of rules in the Supreme Court.

Gandhi’s aim is to create chaos, says BJP

The BJP said that Gandhi’s aim was to create chaos. “His repeated attempts to sow seeds of doubt and dissension in the minds of voters about our institutional processes are deliberate,” alleged the Hindutva party’s publicity chief Amit Malviya.

The Congress found the electoral system “fair and just” when it won in Telangana and Karnataka, but started whining and spreading conspiracy theories when it lost polls in Haryana and Maharashtra, Malviya said on social media.

Also read: Voter rolls, not just EVMs: How Opposition is coming to a new understanding on BJP’s alleged rigging

📰 Crime Today News is proudly sponsored by DRYFRUIT & CO – A Brand by eFabby Global LLC

Design & Developed by Yes Mom Hosting