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 Maharashtra assembly elections scheduled for November 2024 as a “plan for rigged democracy” and expressed concern that Bihar would repeat the same mistakes. Several BJP leaders began criticising Gandhi. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis also responded with an article accusing Gandhi of not recognising the people and their mandate. However, Vote for Democracy (VFD), a Maharashtra citizens’ platform that advocates for free and fair elections, also published a report highlighting and raising questions about the irregularities exposed in the Lok Sabha and Maharashtra elections. VFD refuted Fadnavis’ claims in its article. Below is a detailed refutation of VFD.
Two Views: Leader of the Opposition (League of Progressive Development party) Rahul Gandhi and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis
A year after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the issue of lack of transparency in the conduct of elections, polls and data release for the November 2024 Maharashtra Lok Sabha elections has resurfaced. Rahul Gandhi’s article published on June 7, 2025, received numerous responses from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Election Commission of India (ECI) has been slow to rebut the allegations.
Devendra Fadnavis responds to Rahul Gandhi: ‘Rejected by the people, now he is rejecting their mandate’, June 9, 2025
Many of the issues raised (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) can be debated. But this article will look at the fundamental 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.
The mathematical basis for the findings was provided by Dr. Piara Lal Garg, former Dean of the Punjab University Medical College, Chandigarh. He was one of the key experts of the Vote for Democracy project and contributed to both papers. VFD provided the following preliminary data:
Dr Garg: Devendra Fadnavis IE on 8 June 2025 attempted to use data from non-ECI official records.
2004–2009: 10 million new voters (true statement). However, the actual number of new voters is 9.942 million.
Devendra Fadnavis: “Between 2014 and 2019, 6.3 million new voters were added; between 2009 and 2014, 7.5 million new voters were added; and 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 295,300.
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 2014 Lok Sabha elections to 2014 Vidhan Sabha elections), the number of voters increased by 272,900.
In 2019 (from Lok Sabha elections 2019 to Vidhan Sabha elections 2019), the number of voters increased by 116,100.
Voter count to increase by 40.80 lakh in 2024 (from 2024 Lok Sabha elections to 2024 Vidhan Sabha elections)
The increase in rates over the last hour of voting ranged from 5.82% per hour to 7.83% per hour, or 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.
Moreover, people do not understand: if the Electoral Commission (EC) was able to upload the turnout data by 17:00 at 18:14, who or what prevented the EC from uploading the data by 18:00? The EC uploaded the turnout data by 23:45 at 23:53.
In his long and complex defence, Devendra Fadnavis failed to explain why these (suspicious) phenomena did not surface during the second phase of polling in the Jharkhand Vidhan Sabha. On polling day, between 5 pm and 11:45 pm, the votes increased by only 0.86%. Incidentally, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) lost the election there!
Fadnavis’ reference to “data as of 5 pm for the second phase of the 2024 Maharashtra Lok Sabha elections” is factually incorrect. The Election Commission (ECI) is yet to release state-wise turnout data on polling day. The ECI has only released and compiled the 60.96% turnout data for all parliamentary constituencies. Even the 66.71% turnout data released on April 30, 2024, covered all constituencies and not just Maharashtra.
Fadnavis’ statement contains factual errors as the Election Commission has not yet released the 5 pm polling data: this is the first time in the Lok Sabha elections that the Election Commission has released the 7 pm polling data or later, up to 7.45 pm.
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 voting also takes place from 5 pm to 6 pm and anyone who queues up at the polling station before 6 pm can vote?”
The number of polling stations in Maharashtra is 100,186, but the figure of 142,700 polling stations that JF gave in an unverified article in The Indian Express is a figure he has invented himself.
Fadnavis made another mistake regarding the post 6 pm voting data: The Election Commission (EC) has not yet released such data (1770867) as claimed by Fadnavis. If the data that Fadnavis has is not public, it speaks volumes about the position of the concerned departments (EC) and the Chief Minister. He also distributed the total number of additional votes equally across all the polling stations, completely violating statistical principles.
Fadnavis failed to explain that if, by his own calculations, all voters in the queue voted within 18 minutes and 23 seconds of the scheduled time, then why did the ECI not release the final figures as of 11:45 pm?
Fadnavis was conspicuously (and perhaps wisely) silent about the fact raised by Rahul Gandhi that the number of voters even exceeds the total adult population aged 18 and above!!!
Fadnavis has incorrectly stated the number of youth voters in Maharashtra as 26,46,608 while the figure provided by ECI is INR 22.21 lakh (as on 20th November 2024), vide reference 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 turnout at 5 pm was 60.96% and the final result the next day was 66.71%. That is an increase of 5.75%. But were you hiding this fact when you won that election? Earlier, the final count of votes was released late in the evening; now it is released at 5 pm and the final count is announced the next day. Rahul Gandhi claims that the number of additional voters was limited to 12,000 polling stations in 85 constituencies, most of which were won by the National Democratic Alliance. This calculation is also given in the Lok Sabha article of December 3, 2024. The total number of votes cast after 6:00 PM was 1,770,867. Based on the average turnout that day, 97,103.32 votes were cast per minute at 142,700 polling stations. Thus, if we calculate the average number of votes cast after 6:00 PM, the extra time was only 18 minutes and 23 seconds.
Post time: Aug-30-2025