A Congress delegation led by party leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi and party's Maharashtra unit chief Nana Patole met the Election Commission of India, raising concerns over alleged arbitrary deletion and addition of voters prior to the Maharashtra Assembly elections.
The Congress delegation, including Rajya Sabha MPs Abhishek Singhvi, Nana Patole, Gurdeep Singh Sappal, Mukul Wasnik and Praveen Chakravarty, met the poll panel officials and expressed the party's concerns over the polls.
"We've had a discussion in a very cordial, constructive, positive atmosphere. I started by telling the Commission that ultimately we are furthering the cause of democracy because an uneven non-level playing field for elections directly affects and undermines the basic structure of the Indian Constitution," Singhvi said while addressing press conference after the meeting.
Congress demands disclosure of large volumes of raw data
We said that we are here before you in a constructive spirit, in the interest of transparency and to reduce the trust deficit and ultimately our first step is to get disclosure of large volumes of raw data, he added.
"Once we have the raw data we will be able to give our own conclusions and further analysis will follow. Three or four main issues we raised. Issue number one was the large number of deletions from voter lists in the Maharashtra elections in the five month period between the Lok Sabha elections and the assembly elections," the Congress MP said.
We have questioned the door-to-door surveys which are mandatorily required before you do the deletion, Singhvi said, adding we have asked for raw data booth-wise and constituency-wise.
The second point we raised was the converse point of voter additions, he added. "We pointed out that in this short time of five months, there are roughly 47 lakh additions. Now the election commission says it is 39 lakhs. That's not a small number in a 4.5 month period. They have promised to do so in writing in the near future," the Congress leader said.
The third issue has been a very important and troubling issue repeated in state after state but possibly most graphically illustrated by Maharashtra, he added.
We gave the election commission a sheet showing that astonishingly 118 constituencies of which the BJP won 102 constituencies have an additional voter turnout voting of 25,000 persons per constituency in comparison to the figure which voted just 4-5 months earlier in the Lok Sabha, said Singhvi.
Earlier, the Congress on November 29 raised with the poll body "serious and grave inconsistencies" that it said were being revealed in the data relating to the polling and counting processes for the Maharashtra polls and sought an in-person hearing to present relevant evidence.
In a memorandum to the poll panel, Congress Maharashtra in-charge Ramesh Chennithala, Patole and Congress general secretary Wasnik had said "these glaring inconsistencies", which struck at the very root of a transparent, free and fair electoral system, were not based on any biased motive or farfetched presumptions but had been extracted from the information made publicly available by the Commission. In their memorandum, the Congress leaders had said, "In fact, questions relating to Maharashtra's voter data have also been raised by a former Chief Election Commissioner, hence we are bringing the same to the attention of this Commission."
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