The Election Commission’s too clever denial of Rahul Gandhi’s charges

The three points raised by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday to describe Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of voter deletions as baseless, though factually correct, hide more than they reveal.

Online deletions from the electoral roll ‘by members of the public’ is impossible, the ECI said in a post on X. The ECI is right because applications for deletion can be filed on Form 7 only by other voters listed in the same booth, not by ‘members of the public’.

Gandhi, however, made no such claim in his presentation to the media which was livestreamed today. On the contrary, he not only produced three voters whose names were sought to be deleted but also the three other voters from the same booth whose names and EPIC numbers were used to log in and submit Form 7 for deletion on the grounds that the voters in question no longer lived there.

Gandhi, in fact, mentioned that it was a BLO (booth-level officer) who accidentally discovered the deletions when she found that her uncle’s name was missing from the list and on enquiry, discovered that a neighbour had seemingly applied for the deletion. When accosted, the neighbour denied any role or even knowledge of forms uploaded by him with any such request.

This accidental discovery led to more scrutiny that eventually led to similar attempts made to delete names of over 6,000 voters from the roll in just 10 polling booths of Aland Assembly segment in Karnataka.

The second point raised by the ECI is that an unsuccessful attempt to get names deleted was indeed made in 2023 in Aland, and that it was the ECI itself which lodged an FIR.

The ECI is correct on both counts. It was the Karnataka CEO (chief electoral officer) who lodged an FIR after the deletions were brought to his notice by the Congress candidate, with corroborating evidence. The FIR mentioned online submission of Form 7 and hence refutes the ECI’s first claim that online deletions cannot be made.

The Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition, in reality, accused the CEC of not cooperating with the investigation in Karnataka. Although the state CID investigating the case wrote 18 letters in 18 months, seeking details from the ECI of phone numbers used, IP addresses, how OTPs were generated, and details of the destination device, for one-and-a-half years, the Commission has maintained total silence. Not just the CID but also the Karnataka CEO wrote letters seeking the information to pass on to the CID. Once again, the CEO received no reply.

Yogendra Yadav recalled a courtroom joke on Thursday evening in his video statement on the day’s developments. An accused was asked by the court why he had hit the complainant. The accused replied that he had two points to make: one, that he was out of station on the given day and two, that it was the complainant who had hit him first. The ECI's denial, Yadav pointed out, falls in the same category of a joke. If online deletions are impossible, why did the ECI lodge an FIR?

If the attempt to delete names in just those 10 polling booths was aborted, it was certainly not due to the exertions of the ECI. An alert BLO, alert voters and party workers forced the issue and ensured that the names were restored. In possession of the evidence, the ECI should have tried to identify the culprits who had made the audacious attempt. Instead, the ECI has refused to part with the data and details which it alone possesses.

The third and final point made by the ECI is also factually correct. It was the Congress candidate who won the Aland seat in the 2023 Assembly election. He had lost by 500 votes in the 2018 election but this time, won with a margin of 10,000 votes. What would have happened had the 6,000 voters been successfully deleted? How many more votes were actually deleted in the same segment but not detected by the ECI?

If the ECI has conducted an internal inquiry, the details are not in the public domain. An independent audit would have unearthed the truth but the ECI appears to be allergic to audits. It is also not explained why the ECI, an independent Constitutional body, has refused to cooperate with the Karnataka CID. What is it afraid of?