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 Party faction led by Ajit Pawar – had won 47 out of the 50 Assembly seats where there had been an “average increase of 50,000 voters”.

Overall, the Mahayuti won 230 seats in the 288-member Assembly on November 23. The BJP emerged as the single-largest party with 132 seats. The Shinde Sena won in 57 seats and Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party group won in 41 constituencies.

The Maha Vikas Aghadi – comprising the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), the Nationalist Congress Party faction led by Sharad Pawar and the Congress – won 46 seats.

In its memorandum submitted on Friday, the Congress also sought an explanation from the Election Commission for the “inexplicable increase” in voting percentages from 5 pm to the final voter percentage the poll panel had announced at 11.30 pm on the polling day.

On November 20, the day of polling in Maharashtra, a voter turnout of 58.22% was reported as of 5 pm, according to Election Commission data. By 11.30 pm on the same day, the turnout went up to 65.02% and reached 66.05% by November 21.

“The said discrepancy raises several questions about the manner in which the electoral process was conducted across the state of Maharashtra,” the party had said. “From a common sense viewpoint, over 70 lakh votes being cast in the closing hour of polling is implausible and unheard of in electoral history.”

The Congress urged the Election Commission to grant it an “urgent in-person hearing” to discuss its grievances in detail.

On Saturday, the poll panel told the Congress that copies of the draft electoral roll had been given to all parties ahead of the elections and the verification process involved them at every stage.

On the allegations regarding the voter turnout data, the Election Commission said that the gap in the 5 pm polling data and the final turnout figures was due to procedural priorities, as presiding officers perform multiple statutory duties near the close of the polling before updating turnout data.

At a press conference on Thursday, Congress’ state chief Nana Patole had also accused the Election Commission of tampering with voter data and asked how voter turnout increased by 7.8 percentage points after the polling time had ended.

In response to the allegations, the Election Commission had said on social media that the increase in voter turnout after polling hours was not unusual and followed standard procedures.