Sawt Falasteen - India's Election Commission under fire from opposition

Opposition leaders and critics have alleged that large-scale rigging of elections is impacting the overall results of the vote.

The ECI has denied all charges, the first against it in India's history.

Heading the charge is the leader of the opposition in New Delhi's parliament, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party, who previously alleged that India's electronic voting machines are flawed.

Now Gandhi has accused the ECI of refusing to share digital voter records, detailing what he said was a list of errors after his supporters spent weeks combing through vast piles of registration lists by hand.

- What are the allegations? -

Gandhi, 55, said his party lost dozens of seats in the 2024 parliamentary elections because of vote rigging.

The largest democratic exercise in human history across the country of 1.4 billion people was staggered over six weeks.

Gandhi claimed that the ECI manipulated voter rolls to favour Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Modi, 74, won a historic third term last year but fell short of a majority.

The alleged rigging involved a string of tactics, according to Gandhi.

He said some people voted multiple times, citing bulk registrations from one dwelling and seemingly bogus addresses.

In a presentation to reporters on August 7, Gandhi pointed to a parliamentary constituency his party narrowly lost as an "open and shut" example of the alleged irregularities.

Over 100,000 "fake" votes were cast in the constituency, he said, courtesy of duplicate voters.

His Congress party lost the seat by just over 30,000 votes.

"Our demand from the ECI is clear -- be transparent and release digital voter rolls so that people and parties can audit them," Gandhi said.

- What has the Election Commission said? -

The ECI has called Gandhi's accusation "false and misleading".

India's chief election commissioner said they would "never" back down from their constitutional duties.

"Politics is being done using the Election Commission... as a tool to target India's voters," Gyanesh Kumar told a news conference this month.

"The Election Commission wants to make it clear that it fearlessly stands rock-solid with all voters... without any discrimination and will continue to do so."

Kumar also said those alleging fraud either need to furnish proof under oath or apologise.

"An affidavit must be submitted or an apology to the nation must be made -- there is no third option."

- Why now? -

Gandhi launched a month-long "voter rights" rally in the key battleground state of Bihar on August 17, receiving enthusiastic public response.

The allegations come ahead of elections in Bihar in October or November.

The opposition alleged the ECI had embarked on a "mass disenfranchisement" exercise, after it gave voters in the state just weeks to prove their citizenship, requiring documents that few possess in a registration revamp.

India's top court stepped in last week, allowing a biometric ID most residents possess to be accepted in Bihar's voter registration.

The "Special Intensive Revision" (SIR) of voter registration is set to be replicated across India.

Gandhi called the exercise in Bihar the "final conspiracy".

Activists have reported finding numerous living voters declared dead by election officials, and entire families struck off draft lists.

Voter verification in Bihar is scheduled to be completed by September 25, with the final list released five days later.

"They aim to steal the elections by adding new voters under the guise of SIR and removing existing voters," Gandhi said.

The ECI has defended the registration revision, saying it is in part to avoid "foreign illegal immigrants" from voting.

Members of Modi's BJP have long claimed that large numbers of undocumented Muslim migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh have fraudulently entered India's electoral rolls.

Criticism mounted after the ECI replaced Bihar's machine-readable voter records with scanned image files that do not allow text searches.

Critics said the changes made detecting anomalies more time-consuming and prone to error.

T.Ibrahim--SF-PST