EC rejects Congress’ claims of discrepancies in Maharashtra polling data, draft electoral rolls

The Election Commission on Saturday dismissed the Congress’ allegations of discrepancies in polling data and the draft electoral rolls of the recent Maharashtra Assembly elections.

In a letter addressed to the Congress, the poll panel said that a transparent electoral process had been followed with the involvement of all contesting parties, their candidates and agents at every stage of the polls.

The poll panel also invited a delegation from the party on December 3 to discuss its concerns further.

This came a day after the Congress submitted a memorandum to the Election Commission alleging that there were “serious and grave inconsistencies” in the data related to the polling and counting processes of the Assembly elections in Maharashtra.

This included concerns regarding the alleged “arbitrary deletion of voters and subsequent addition” of more than 10,000 voters in each constituency from the final voter lists.

“With this exercise of unchecked and arbitrary deletion and consequent insertion of voters, the state of Maharashtra witnessed an unprecedented increase of an estimated 47 lakh voters being added to the electoral roll from between July 2024 – November 2024,” the party claimed in its memorandum.

It added that that the ruling Mahayuti alliance – comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Shiv Sena group led by Eknath Shinde and the Nationalist Congress...

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