Congress writes to ECI, Requests machine-readable, digital copy of Maharashtra voter lists, Videos
“will co-operate with the Election Commission to help strengthen our electoral processes.”
Congress writes to ECI, Requests the machine-readable, digital copy of the Maharashtra voter lists, Video footage
Congress's allegations of Voter list Manipulation by ECI latest news: The All India Congress Committee, on Thursday, wrote to the Secretary, Secretariat of the Election Commission of India, Shri Ashwani Kumar Mohal, in response to ECI’s letter to the Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi with an offer to meet and discuss the issues about the Maharashtra 2024 Vidhan Sabha election raised by Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party.
The letter requested the ECI to provide “the machine-readable, digital copy of the Maharashtra voter lists and video footage of polling day of Maharashtra and Haryana within a week from the date of this letter.”
The letter begins with, “We are a group set up by the All India Congress Committee to co-ordinate matters and issues with the Election Commission of India on behalf of the Indian National Congress. We are writing in response to your letter dated 12.06.2025 to the Hon. Leader of Opposition Shri. Rahul Gandhi with an offer to meet and discuss the issues about the Maharashtra 2024 Vidhan Sabha election raised by Shri. Rahul Gandhi ji and the Congress party.”
The members of the group set up by the All India Congress Committee to deal with the matters as mentioned in the letter are, Ajay Maken, Digvijaya Singh, Abhishek Singhvi, Praveen Chakravarty, Pawan Khera, Gurdeep Singh Sappal, Nitin Raut, and Vamshi Chand Reddy.
The letter reminded the ECI that since “December 2024 through several letters, petitions, press conferences by leaders of the INDIA alliance bloc of political parties, articles and speeches on the floor of the Lok Sabha by the Hon. Leader of Opposition, we have put forth very factual issues concerning the sudden, huge increase in electors and voters for the 2024 Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha election and the inexplicable upsurge in polling after 5pm on election day.”
As per Congress’s allegations, it questioned where the voters came from.
“It is irrefutable from EC’s own data that there were more new electors added between the Maharashtra 2024 Lok Sabha election held in May and the Vidhan Sabha elections held in November than there were in the prior five full years between 2019 Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha elections and 2024 Lok Sabha elections. This has never happened before and defies basic common sense and logic. Who are these new voters and where did they emerge from?”
It reiterated its demand for a machine-readable copy of these two electors’ lists for comparing the final electors list for the Maharashtra 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the final electors list for the Maharashtra 2024 Vidhan Sabha elections to investigate the matter.
“To investigate this thoroughly, any rational person would agree that the starting step is to compare the final electors list for Maharashtra 2024 Lok Sabha elections and final electors list for Maharashtra 2024 Vidhan Sabha elections. This is precisely what the Congress party and Shri. Rahul Gandhi have been asking for seven months – a digital, machine-readable copy of these two electors lists for an apples-to-apples comparison,” the letter said.
It strongly criticized the ECI for not meeting the requests and posed a question on whether the ECI has the voter lists or not.
“It is intriguing and puzzling that except to provide these two voter lists, the Election Commission has engaged in all other sorts of responses, media leaks, and calumny. Why don’t you just give us the final voter lists as requested? Since you have evaded this for so long, we must ask the logical follow-up question – do you or do you not have these voter lists? In this context, not providing video footage of polling day raises further doubts and suspicion,” the letter read.
“It is neither helpful nor productive to deflect from our simple and straightforward requests with long winded responses of the process of addition or deletion of voters or blaming a political party’s organisational functioning or claiming these voter lists were given to individual candidates and so on,” it added.
It highlighted and re-requested, “We request you to provide us the machine-readable, digital copy of the Maharashtra voter lists and video footage of polling day of Maharashtra and Haryana within a week from the date of this letter. This has been a long-standing request which should be easy to comply for the EC.”
It also expressed its willingness to meet the EC and assured to present the findings of their analysis.
“The Congress party leadership will be happy to meet with the EC soon after we have received these. In that meeting, will even present the findings of our analysis to you.”
The letter said that they “will co-operate with the Election Commission to help strengthen our electoral processes.”
This letter is part of an ongoing standoff between the Congress party and the Election Commission of India over alleged irregularities in the Maharashtra 2024 elections, centering on voter list transparency and polling day events. Congress is pushing for data to support its claims, while accusing the ECI of stonewalling.
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