Shiv Sena minister, MLA join Opposition in demanding voter list rectification

Echoing the Opposition’s allegations of irregularities in Maharashtra’s electoral rolls, ruling Shiv Sena MLA Sanjay Gaikwad on Thursday urged the Election Commission of India (ECI) to take immediate steps to remove duplicate and deceased voters from the lists.

Speaking to reporters, Gaikwad said every voter should be linked to Aadhaar and the death certificate system to ensure automatic deletion of names once a person dies.

“Why is the Election Commission not deleting dual voters (voters whose names figure in two or more lists) and those who figure in the list despite being deceased?” Gaikwad asked, adding that some voters in his district had died 30 years ago and yet their names remained on current rolls. He estimated the number of such voters to be around one lakh.

Gaikwad also questioned the ECI’s decision to stop updating voter lists on 25 July, asking what would happen to citizens who became eligible to vote after the cut-off date.

Responding to the controversy, Shiv Sena leader and minister of state for home Yogesh Kadam said in Ratnagiri that seeking corrections in voter rolls was justified. “There is nothing wrong with it. The EC should make a rectification if there are dual voters. It (the demand) will also have our support,” he said.

Meanwhile, in Mumbai, NCP (Sharad Pawar) leader Rohit Pawar accused the ruling Mahayuti alliance of large-scale manipulation of voter lists following the BJP-led Mahayuti’s poor performance in the Lok Sabha elections.

“Unfavourable” voters were shown as dead, and bogus voting took place in the name of dead persons,” Pawar claimed. He alleged that malpractices such as registration of bogus voters, bulk deletion of genuine names, and double registration had taken place across multiple constituencies.

Pawar pointed to statistical inconsistencies in the ECI’s data. “Between 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha polls, 32 lakh voters were added, which amounted to the addition of 6.5 lakh voters per year or 54,000 per month. But between the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the Maharashtra Assembly polls, 48 lakh voters were added in just six months,” he noted.

In his Karjat-Jamkhed Assembly segment, Pawar said, 14,292 voters were added, 5,360 names deleted, and 14,162 duplicate names inserted in the rolls after the Lok Sabha elections. He also alleged instances of identity misuse, saying, “There were instances where the Aadhaar card of a voter in one constituency was used for the registration of another voter in a different constituency with the photo and name changed.”

The issue has sparked a political storm, with Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray, Maharashtra Navanirman Sena president Raj Thackeray, and other Opposition leaders jointly addressing a press conference on Wednesday to highlight what they termed “grave irregularities” in the electoral rolls. They demanded that local body elections be postponed until the discrepancies are resolved.

On Thursday, however, Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Nirupam offered a more moderate view. Acknowledging that there were indeed errors in the lists, he argued that the Opposition’s demand to suspend polls entirely was excessive.

“There are more than 9.5 crore voters in the state, and over one lakh voters’ lists. Claiming that there is a problem in everything is a bit far-fetched,” Nirupam said, noting that local body elections have already been delayed for five to seven years.

With PTI inputs