Controversy continues to rock the conduct of the November 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections, in which the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti alliance’s victory was as decisive as its defeat in the state in the Lok Sabha elections just five months before that. Official data gathered over the last nine months from public sources and applications under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, and compiled from non-machine-readable documents raise fresh questions on the sanctity of the electoral rolls. At the heart of the storm is the net addition of 40.81 lakh electors in the state in the five months between the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections of 2024.

This unprecedented and demographic logic-defying surge was largely in regions ultimately swept by the ruling Mahayuti alliance. The spike, timed in narrow pre-poll windows and skewed toward select constituencies, cannot be explained by youth enrolments, sudden high in-migration, official population estimates or past trends, providing credence to opposition claims of official malpractice. A comparison with the 2019 elections highlights striking trends where electors in constituencies in decline between 2019 and 2024, suddenly grew at an astounding rate in five months. These findings are consistent, though not conclusive, with the concerns recently raised about the sanctity of electoral rolls, and echo ground reports that suspect bogus voting. At the same time, the onus of providing conclusive evidence is not on electors, but on the Election Commission of India (ECI) – which has so far offered little transparency or investigation. These anomalies thus raise troubling questions about electoral integrity and oversight in a crucial political battleground, demanding urgent scrutiny and accountability, all the more because the ECI delayed the Maharashtra assembly elections by a month vis-a-vis those in 2009, 2014 and 2019.

By collating and comparing data from these previous elections, it is evident that the scale of addition of new electors in 2024 is unprecedented. This accretion is skewed towards regions and constituencies that were overwhelmingly won by the ruling Mahayuti alliance. Further, the rise in the number of electors was concentrated in a short window of time – in August 2024, and again in about four days between October 15 and 19. The Mahaytui alliance is led by the BJP and mainly comprises the breakaway Shiv Sena under Eknath Shinde and the breakaway Nationalist Congress Party under Ajit Pawar. 

The surge in electors is not driven by the number of new adults turning 18 and becoming eligible to vote (about 8.72 lakhs). Nor is there any evidence of a large-scale in-migration into the state in those five months. In fact, data from the 2019 Vidhan Sabha elections shows that many constituencies which registered a sharp increase in electors between June and October 2024, were barely showing any growth in the previous four and a half years. Some of them had actually lost electors between the 2019 Vidhan Sabha elections and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Further, projections from 2019 by the National Commission of Population too do not indicate a large-enough in-migration into the state that would explain 31 odd lakh new electors over the age of 20 in five months. At 9.7 crore, the total number of general electors (i.e. excluding service electors) for the Vidhan Sabha elections 2024 is potentially higher than the population of adults in Maharashtra, projected to be around 9.5-9.6 crore by the Congress party, and also by Pyara Lal Garg, independent expert associated with Vote for Democracy, based on trends mapped by the aforementioned report.

The net addition of 40.81 lakh thus defies demographic trends and raises questions, if not suspicions.

Rahul Gandhi, the Congress party and other Maha Vikas Aghadi allies have repeatedly alleged the presence of large-scale fraudulent voters on the rolls, both before and after the elections. The Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance comprises the Shiv Sena (UBT) under Uddhav Thackeray, the Congress, the NCP (SP) under Sharad Pawar, the left parties and the Peasants and Workers Party. A formal complaint by the alliance was lodged with the state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) on October 19, 2024, a month before the assembly elections. There were other representations and complaints too raised before the elections in different constituencies, including to the police and to the Bombay high court. Even on the day of the elections, some candidates expressed alarm about dubious voters enrolled at an industrial scale, but so far the Election Commission has not launched any investigation, nor gone beyond a

© The Wire