Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, recently presented what he claimed was concrete "evidence" of large-scale "vote theft" in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura Assembly constituency. However, in making these accusations, Gandhi inadvertently lent strong support to the very Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls that the Election Commission of India (ECI) is conducting in Bihar and proposing nationwide—an exercise the Congress party and its allies have consistently opposed.
Gandhi accused the BJP of winning the 2023 Karnataka Assembly seat by exploiting serious discrepancies in the voter list, which he alleged included over one lakh suspicious entries out of a total of 6.5 lakh voters. The BJP candidate had won the seat by a margin of 44,500 votes. To substantiate his claim, the Congress party reportedly conducted months of fieldwork, manually verifying voter data.
Dressed in his usual white T-shirt and addressing the media in an aggressive tone, Gandhi highlighted five types of electoral fraud: duplicate voter entries, fake or invalid addresses, bulk registrations at a single address, poor-quality or fake voter photos, and misuse of Form 6, used for registering new voters. He called Mahadevapura a test case for problems that could exist in voter rolls across the entire country and demanded that the Election Commission provide electoral data in digital format for public verification.
Interestingly, the same five issues highlighted by Gandhi are exactly what the Election Commission aims to address through the SIR process. The EC’s reasoning for launching the SIR exercise—starting with Bihar, where elections are approaching—is to tackle voter roll discrepancies through door-to-door verification. The last such intensive exercise was conducted two decades ago, and since then, only limited summary revisions have taken place. With rapid urbanisation, frequent migration, unreported deaths, and even the suspected inclusion of illegal immigrants in voter lists, errors and duplications have grown over time. Intensive revision and Aadhaar-linked EPIC numbers are key tools to ensure cleaner, more accurate voter lists.
The EC has explicitly stated that a large portion of the Indian population, nearly 30% as per 2020-21 data, consists of internal migrants. This movement often results in multiple registrations across constituencies, necessitating a robust and recurring revision of electoral rolls. Despite the Congress's opposition to SIR, Gandhi’s claims implicitly validate the EC’s need for such an exercise, particularly given that nearly all his allegations can be addressed through systematic verification.
Adding to his argument, Gandhi cited the case of 70-year-old Shakun Rani, who had reportedly applied for voter registration twice within two months—on September 13 and again on October 31, 2023. However, since the Karnataka election had already taken place in May 2023, the registration anomalies he referenced occurred post-election. Interestingly, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, a close ally of Gandhi in Bihar, is also known to hold two EPIC numbers.
The EC has previously acknowledged that the issue of duplicate EPIC numbers dates back to the early 2000s when the system was first rolled out. In a March statement, the Commission said it would need at least three months to resolve these legacy issues. Furthermore, the concerns over Form 6 misuse raised by Gandhi have already been highlighted by independent reports, including from India Today Digital, and are a known concern for the EC.
Out of the five irregularities Gandhi accused the BJP of benefiting from, four—duplicate entries, invalid addresses, mass registrations under one address, and improper voter photos—can be effectively resolved by implementing the SIR model at a national level. However, for that to succeed, political parties, particularly the opposition, must stop obstructing the initiative and instead participate constructively in the process.
The Supreme Court is currently overseeing the SIR process to ensure there are no wrongful exclusions of eligible voters. Moreover, political parties themselves are given representation through Booth Level Agents (BLAs), who can flag any suspicious entries during the verification stage.
While the EC has formally refuted the Congress leader’s allegations, it could also interpret his accusations as an unintended endorsement of its ongoing voter roll cleansing operation. Rahul Gandhi, through his campaign against voter fraud, has inadvertently made a case for nationwide SIR, supporting the very process his party opposes. For the health of Indian democracy, such rigorous and periodic voter verification efforts are essential to ensure that every eligible voter is counted accurately and no one’s mandate is stolen.
