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The Congress, the Shiv Sena-UBT and the Nationalist Congress Party-SP on Friday alleged irregularities in the voter lists of Maharashtra, claiming that a total of 39 lakh voters were added between Lok Sabha and assembly elections in the state.
Addressing a joint press conference in New Delhi, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi claimed that the total number of voters added in Maharashtra was equivalent to the population of a state like Himachal Pradesh, and urged the Election Commission to provide them list of voters and come clean on the issue.
He claimed the majority of the voters added have gone in the BJP's favour as the opposition parties have maintained their vote share in the assembly polls.
Soon after Gandhi's press conference, the Election Commission said it will respond with full facts in writing.
"ECI considers political parties, as priority stake holders, of course the voters being the prime and deeply values views, suggestions, questions coming from political parties," the poll body said in a post on X.
"Commission would respond in writing with full factual & procedural matrix uniformly adopted across the country," it said without naming Gandhi or referring to his allegations.
Flanked by NCP-SP's Supriya Sule and Sena's Sanjay Raut, Gandhi said the adult population of Maharashtra is 9.54 crore as per government data while the voter population of the state is 9.7 crore.
There are more voters in Maharashtra than total adult population of state, alleged Rahul Gandhi.
He said while 39 lakh voters were added in Maharashtra in five months after LS polls, as much as 32 lakh votes were added in the state in the previous five years between 2019 and 2024.
He said if the EC does not provide the voter lists of assembly and Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra, it poses a serious question.
"We are now heading towards complete destruction of Constitution. But, we are in the business of protecting the Constitution," Gandhi told reporters.
He said the next step would be to knock at the doors of the judiciary.
"It is surprising to me that the EC is not ready to give us voter lists and the only reason possible is that there is something wrong and they know it," Gandhi claimed.
Raut said, "If the EC is alive and is not dead, it should answer questions posed by Rahul Gandhi. Otherwise it will be construed that EC is slave to the government."
The EC should bring transparency, he added.