On Saturday, newspapers like The Indian Express published an article by Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the parliamentary opposition, titled “Election rigging in Maharashtra”. In the article, published ahead of the upcoming Bihar assembly elections, Gandhi termed the November 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections as a “plan for rigged democracy” and expressed fear that Bihar would repeat the same mistake. Several BJP leaders began criticising Gandhi. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis also wrote a counter-article, accusing Gandhi of not recognising the people and their mandate. However, Vote for Democracy (VFD), a Maharashtra citizens’ platform for free and fair elections, also published a report highlighting the contradictions in the Lok Sabha and Maharashtra elections and raising questions. The platform refuted Fadnavis’ claims in its article. Below is a detailed refutation by VFD.
Two Views: Leader of the Opposition (Progressive Movement League Party) Rahul Gandhi and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis
A year after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the issue of opaque conduct of elections, polls and data release for the November 2024 Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra has resurfaced. Rahul Gandhi’s article was published on June 7, 2025 and has received numerous responses from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Election Commission of India (ECI) has not yet taken the initiative to refute the allegations.
Devendra Fadnavis’s reply to Rahul Gandhi: Rejected by the people, now he is rejecting the people’s mandate, June 9, 2025
Many of the issues raised can be debated (including the dubious claim that the NDA has made the process of appointing members of the Election Commission of India (ECI) “more transparent (!!!)” as the ruling coalition at the Centre rushed to pass a law to overturn the Supreme Court’s November 2023 judgment that included the Chief Justice of India (CJI) in the election process). But this article will look at the key omissions (or anomalies) in the data provided by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
In short, he speaks selectively, incorrectly, and tends to omit facts that are unfavorable to the ruling party.
Dr Piyala Lal Garg, former Dean of the Punjab University Medical College, Chandigarh, is the expert who provided the mathematical basis for the derivation and one of the key experts of the Vote for Democracy project who contributed to the research of both papers. VFD provides the following preliminary data:
Dr. Garg: Devendra Fadnavis IE on June 8, 2025 attempted to use data not officially registered with ECI.
2004–2009: 10 million new voters (true statement). But the exact number is 9.942 million new voters.
Devendra Fadnavis: “Between 2014 and 2019, 6.3 million new voters were added; between 2009 and 2014, 7.5 million new voters were added; between 2004 and 2009, 10 million new voters were added. This means that nothing much will happen in 2024.”
In 2004 (from the 2004 Lok Sabha elections to the 2004 Vidhan Sabha elections), the number of voters increased by 295.3 thousand.
In 2009 (from the 2009 Lok Sabha elections to the 2009 Vidhan Sabha elections), the number of voters increased by 301,400.
In 2014 (from Lok Sabha elections 2014 to Vidhan Sabha elections 2014), the number of voters increased by 272.9 thousand.
In 2019 (from Lok Sabha elections 2019 to Vidhan Sabha elections 2019), the number of voters increased by 116.1 thousand.
The number of voters will increase by 408,000 in 2024 (compared to 2024 Lok Sabha elections and 2024 Vidhan Sabha elections).
The increase in rates in the last hour of voting ranged from 5.82% per hour to 7.83% per hour, representing an increase of 2%: in absolute terms, this increase is equivalent to an increase in the number of votes by 659,700 (extrapolated based on ECI data).
Even if the same figure is distributed across all 100,186 polling stations, the number of votes cast per hour is still more than 65, while the average normal number of votes cast per hour, including express polls, is 56.5.
Also, people do not understand that if the Electoral Commission (EC) was able to upload the data of the vote held at 17:00 at 18:14, then who or what prevented the EC from uploading the data of the vote held at 18:00? The EC uploaded the data of the vote held at 23:45 at 23:53.
In his lengthy and complex defence, Devendra Fadnavis fails to explain why these (suspicious) phenomena did not surface in the second phase of the Jharkhand Vidhan Sabha polls, which were taking place at the same time. On polling day, between 5 pm and 11:45 pm, the votes rose by only 0.86%. Incidentally, the NDA lost the election there!
Fadnavis is factually incorrect when he quotes “data as of 5 pm for the second phase of the 2024 Maharashtra Lok Sabha elections”. The fact is that the Election Commission (ECI) is yet to upload the voter turnout data for each state on the polling day. The ECI has published and aggregated only 60.96% voter turnout for all the parliamentary constituencies. Even the voter turnout data of 66.71% released on April 30, 2024, covers only all the constituencies and not just Maharashtra.
Fadnavis’ statement contains factual errors as the Election Commission has not yet released the 5 pm poll data: In the Lok Sabha elections, the Election Commission has released the data for the period from 7 pm to 7:45 pm for the first time.
Devendra Fadnavis: “The claim of a sudden increase in voter turnout is complete nonsense. To understand how much the turnout has increased in the last hour, one has to look at the hourly turnout. The average hourly turnout for the entire day was 5.83%. So what new information are you revealing when you say that the voter turnout has increased by 7.83% in the last hour? Doesn’t Rahul Gandhi know that 5 pm to 6 pm is also voting time and anyone standing in line at the polling station before 6 pm can vote?”
The number of polling stations in Maharashtra is 100,186 and the figure of 142,700 polling stations mentioned by JF in an unverified article in The Indian Express is his own invention.
Fadnavis has again made a mistake in the post 6pm polling data: The Election Commission (EC) has never published such data before 1770 (67, citing Fadnavis). If the data available with Fadnavis is not publicly available, then it speaks volumes about the position of the relevant departments (EC) and the Prime Minister. He has also distributed the total number of additional votes equally among all the polling stations, which is completely against the principles of statistics.
Fadnavis failed to explain that if, by his own calculations, all the voters in the queue voted within 18 minutes and 23 seconds of the scheduled time, then why did the ECI not announce the final figures at 11.45 pm?
Fadnavis was conspicuously (and perhaps wisely) silent on the fact raised by Rahul Gandhi that the number of voters even exceeds the total adult population aged 18 and above!!!
Fadnavis has wrongly given the number of youth voters in Maharashtra as 26,46,608 while the figure given by ECI is Rs 22.21 lakh (as on 20th November 2024), vide No. ECI/PN/163/2024.
Devendra Fadnavis: And this is not just happening in Maharashtra. In the second phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the voter turnout at 5 pm was 60.96% and the final result the next day was 66.71%. There was an increase of 5.75% in voter turnout. But were you hiding this fact when you won that election? Earlier, the final voter turnout figures were released late in the evening; now they are released at 5 pm and the final figures are released the next day. Rahul Gandhi claims that the increase in voter turnout was limited to 12,000 polling stations in 85 constituencies and most of these seats went to the National Democratic Alliance. This count is also given in the Lok Sabha paper of December 3, 2024. The total number of votes cast after 6:00 PM was 1,770,867. Based on the average voter turnout that day, 97,103.32 votes were cast every minute at 142,700 polling stations. Thus, taking into account the average number of votes cast after 6:00 PM, the extra time was only 18 minutes and 23 seconds.
Post time: Jul-21-2025