Maharashtra Election Results: Congress raises ‘serious issues’ with Election Commission, seeks in-person hearing

Senior Congress officials wrote to the Election Commission on Friday over claims of “large scale electoral fraud” during the recently concluded Maharashtra Assembly elections. Members of the party have also asked the poll body for an in-person hearing to present the relevant evidence and raise constituency-wise issues.

The Congress registered its worst ever performance in Maharashtra this week — winning only 16 out of the 101 seats it contested. The party however insists that the poll results were ‘not in sync with public sentiments’ and flagged ‘serious inconsistencies’ in the polling and counting processes. Party leaders have also issued repeated calls for ballots paper to replace electronic voting machines in recent days.

According to the letter shared by the Congress, there had been “arbitrary deletion of voters and subsequent addition of over 10,000 voters in each constituency from the final voter lists” ahead of polls. They argued that 47 out of 50 constituencies that had seen an average increase of 50,000 voters were eventually won by candidates from the ruling regime.

Congress leaders noted that questions related to the state voter data had also been raised by former Chief Election Commissioner SY Qureshi.

The party claimed that there had been an “inexplicable” and “unprecedented” increase in voting percentages between 5:00 pm and 11:30 pm when the final voter percentage was declared by the EC. Congress submitted that voter data released by the EC appeared to indicate “approximately 76 Lakh votes were cast” between 5:00 pm and 6:00 pm on November 21. There was also another hike of “approximately 10 lakh votes” hours before the counting.

The missive came even as the Congress Working Committee met on Friday to deliberate on its recent poll performances. The party's top decision-making body is also deliberating its preparations and possibility of alliances for the polls in Delhi as well as preparations for the Bihar Assembly polls next year.

(With inputs from agencies)