The Election Commission on Friday ripped into Congress MP Rahul Gandhi with sharp responses to his hard-hitting questions on alleged electoral roll discrepancies and poll irregularities.
The EC responded to the questions in a post on X with the screenshot of Gandhi’s post and hashtag #ECIFactCheck, dismissing his statement as misleading.
What did Rahul Gandhi ask?
1. Why isn’t the opposition getting the digital voter list? What are you hiding?
2. CCTV and video evidence are being erased – why? On whose orders?
3. Fake voting and tampering with the voter list – why?
4. Threatening and intimidating opposition leaders – why?
5. Tell us clearly – has the ECI now become an agent of the BJP?
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How EC responded?
1. On the digital voter list question, the poll body reminded a similar issue raised in 2018 in Madhya Pradesh. The EC said, “INC plea of providing machine-readable voter list was rejected by Hon’ble Supreme Court in Kamal Nath vs ECI, 2019.”
2 . On the question of erasing CCTV and video footages, the poll body said, “Any aggrieved Candidate can file an election petition (EP) to challenge his election in the concerned High Court within 45 days. If an EP is filed, CCTV footage is retained; otherwise, it serves no purpose – unless someone intends to breach voter privacy.“
Noting technical and practical constraints in CCTV footage keeping and analysing, it explained with an example saying, “reviewing CCTV footage from 1 lakh polling stations would take 1 lakh days – that’s approximately 273 years – with no legal outcome possible.“
3. On the fake voter list question, the EC said that during the preparation of the Electoral Roll in Lok Sabha 2024, hardly any appeals were filed by Congress across all 36 States & UTs under Section 24 of the RP Act 1950.
4. The EC further said that allegations have been made by Gandhi, which was reported by the media, but there is no written complaint ever submitted by him.
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The poll body said, “For example, he raised the Maharashtra issue in December 2024. Subsequently, an advocate from AICC wrote to ECI. Our reply, dated 24 December 2024, is publicly available on the ECI website. Yet, Shri Rahul Gandhi claims that ECI never responded.”
Reiterating its call to either provide the affidavit with oath/declaration or apologise to the nation.