Amid Opposition claims of irregularities in the electoral rolls, the Election Commission on Thursday said that using terms like “vote chori” amounts to an attack on voters and undermines the integrity of lakhs of poll workers.
The poll body stated that if anyone has concrete evidence of a person voting twice in an election, it should be submitted to the EC along with a written affidavit, rather than labelling all Indian voters as ‘chor’ without proof.
It said creating a false narrative through such language not only targets crores of electors but also questions the honesty of the election staff, Indian Express reported.
The EC also noted that the principle of “one person, one vote” has been in place since India’s first general elections in 1951–52.
The remarks came a week after the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, on August 7, shared findings from the Congress’ review of the electoral rolls for the Mahadevapura Assembly segment in the Bangalore Central parliamentary constituency.
At a press conference, Rahul Gandhi alleged that more than one lakh votes had been “stolen” through methods such as duplicate entries, false or invalid addresses, unusually high numbers of voters registered at a single address, invalid photographs, and misuse of Form 6, which is used for new voter registrations.
The Election Commission dismissed his claims as misleading and, through the Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer, asked him to submit a written affidavit detailing the allegations.
Since then, the Congress and other Opposition parties have raised similar concerns about discrepancies in electoral rolls in several other states.
The BJP has also accused the Opposition of benefiting from voter list irregularities in seats held by key leaders. These include Rahul Gandhi’s Rae Bareli constituency, Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee’s Diamond Harbour seat, and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav’s Kannauj constituency. On Wednesday, BJP MP Anurag Thakur claimed there were 2.69 lakh doubtful voters in Rae Bareli.