GHOST VOTER BUSTERS
A Congress claim that millions of voter IDs are fake provokes house to house surveys
On June 3, Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath, former chief minister Digvijaya Singh and poll campaign committee chairman Jyotiraditya Scindia collectively complained to the Election Commission of India (ECI) that there were some 6 million “duplicate, false, illegal and invalid” names on Madhya Pradesh’s electoral rolls.
The leaders handed in 101 CDs bearing details of such voters in 101 assembly constituencies, drawing considerable media attention. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), curiously, had no response to the apparently serious charges. Cleverly acknowledging that the revision of electoral rolls is done under the EC’s supervision, the Congress leaders dared BJP leaders to join them in demanding a probe.
Acting swiftly, the commis-
OF MP’S 50.7 MILLION VOTERS, 6 MILLION, OR A 10TH, MAY BE INVALID NAMES
sion dashed teams to Seoni Malwa, Hoshangabad, Narela and Bhojpur, four randomly selected constituencies for verification of voter lists. Five days later, on June 8, the EC informed the Congress that it had found no major issues with the rolls and that minor discrepancies were being addressed.
Interestingly, the Congress had first raised the issue of fake voters during the assembly bypolls at Mungaoli and Kolaras in February. The party complained about the names of deceased voters and those who had shifted out of the constituency continuing on voter lists. The EC had moved out the then district magistrate of Ashok Nagar, holding him responsible for the discrepancies.
Convinced they were on to something, Congress leaders commissioned surveys by two private agencies. They found the same photograph was being used for several voters in a single polling booth as well as across constituencies. In one instance, a woman voter’s picture was found on 26 different voter cards! Based on the agencies’ estimation of 2.7 million voters in 101 constituencies, Congress leaders extrapolated the numbers to 6 million fake voters in all 230 assembly segments.
Madhya Pradesh, as per the electoral rolls revised up to January 1, 2018, has 50.7 million voters, which, if the Congress’s claims are valid, means that a tenth of the voters are bogus. The party also pointed out that the overall number of voters had increased far more than the proportional population growth in the state.
“Something of this magnitude cannot be a mistake,” says Scindia. “It is deliberate and this is how the BJP wins elections.”
It now seems that the EC may have been somewhat hasty in rejecting the Congress’s allegations. But the party’s plaint has provoked a house-to-house survey to remove names of deceased voters and physically verify the others. Officials have been instructed to verify voters in every booth. Interestingly, the EC itself has overseen the removal of nearly 1.5 million names from the voter list in the past one year.
Analysts see the Congress’s complaint as part of the party’s new political strategy. They say it is inspired by the party’s past successes—like the Ater bypoll in 2017 when its complaint led to the shifting of the Bhind district magistrate and then of the Ashok Nagar DM.
“The EC probe covered a fraction of the voters mentioned in our complaint,” says Scindia. “We will go to the EC again with fresh details. We demand that a physical verification of bogus voters mentioned by us be carried out by the EC and not merely a random assessment without visiting the constituencies in the interiors.”