EC tells Rahul to submit affidavit or apologise
Hitting back at Rahul Gandhi for his ‘vote theft’ charges against the Election Commission, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Sunday served a seven-day ultimatum on the Congress leader to submit a signed affidavit to back his claims, else his allegations will be considered baseless and invalid.
In his first press conference after Gandhi levelled allegations of ‘vote chori’ in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and several opposition leaders flagged issues about revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, a combative Kumar asked Gandhi to either apologise or back his claims with a signed affidavit as required under electoral rules.
“Give an affidavit or apologise to the nation. There is no third option. If an affidavit is not given within seven days, this means that all allegations are baseless,” said Kumar, flanked by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.
The remarks by the CEC came on a day when Gandhi-led opposition launched the Vote Adhikar Yatra’ in Bihar and stepped up attack against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the poll-bound state. Kumar said the SIR exercise was aimed at removing all shortcomings in the voter list and it is a matter of grave concern that some parties are spreading misinformation about it, “firing from the Election Commission’s shoulder”.
“If one thinks that by making a PPT presentation with wrong facts, the ECI will act, that is not the case. EC cannot act without the affidavit in such a serious matter as it would be against the law and the Constitution,” Kumar said.
Levelling allegations of “vote chori”, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi had on July 31, through a presentation at a press conference, cited data from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to claim that over 1 lakh votes were “stolen” in Mahadevapura assembly segment in Karnataka through five types of manipulation, including duplicate voters, fake and invalid addresses and single-address voters.
The chief electoral officers of several states had asked Gandhi to file an affidavit under oath on his claims, but he had refused to do so.
The CEC on Sunday admitted that there could be discrepancies in the electoral rolls and asserted that SIR was the only way to correct this. He, however, contended that a person being present in multiple voter lists does not automatically mean that he or she also voted multiple times.
Kumar also said the poll panel has already identified and corrected more than three lakh cases of multiple people having the same voter identity card numbers, but the duplicate voter issue of one person being listed as a voter at multiple places can be resolved only through exercises like SIR.
“At the ground level, all the voters, district presidents of political parties, BLOs are working transparently, validating and giving video testimonials. It is a worrying matter that these efforts are not reaching their national and state level leaders, or they are ignoring it to create confusion. The truth is, all the stakeholders are walking in tandem to make the SIR successful; they are working hard,” Kumar said.
Can’t share machine-readable voters list, says CEC: Citing a 2019 Supreme Court judgment, CEC on Sunday said that the voter list in machine-readable format cannot be shared with political parties.
He also said there was a difference between machine-readable and searchable formats.
Kumar said that the voter list available on its website can be searched using a voter card number and can also be downloaded.
He said the machine-readable format is barred as it can be edited and can lead to its misuse.