Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday urged the Election Commission to explain a series of alleged anomalies in Maharashtra’s voter list, and urged the poll panel to share with the Opposition the state’s electoral rolls for the 2024 Lok Sabha election and the Assembly election held five months apart.

The general election took place in April and May, followed by the state polls in November.

Gandhi asked the poll panel to clarify how the number of registered voters for the Assembly election (9.7 crore) was more than the entire adult population of the state (9.54 crore).

He also urged it to explain why more voters were added to the state’s electoral rolls in the period between the Lok Sabha election and the Assembly polls than in the preceding five years.

About 39 lakh voters – equal to Himachal Pradesh’s entire voting population – were added to Maharashtra’s electoral rolls between the Lok Sabha election and the Assembly polls, Gandhi claimed. In comparison, just 32 lakh electors were added between the 2019 Maharashtra election and the 2024 parliamentary election, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha told reporters.

He cited the example of the Kamthi Assembly seat in the Nagpur district, where he claimed that the BJP’s winning margin in the 2024 Assembly election was nearly equal to the number of new voters added.

“The nice way to say it is that the EC has lost control of the list,” Gandhi said. “The bad way to say it is that the EC has manipulated the list. Now, it’s the responsibility of the EC to come clean on what has happened.”

The Congress leader made these allegations at a press conference that he addressed along with Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Sanjay Raut and Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar)’s Supriya Sule. The three parties are the key constituents of the state’s Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi bloc.

Raut said that while the Election Commission should answer Gandhi’s questions, it will not do so as it is “acting as a slave to the government”.

Sule alleged that there was a “multi-pronged attack” on Opposition forces in Maharashtra, through parties being split, confusion surrounding party symbols and alleged anomalies in voter lists.

The Election Commission said on Friday that it will respond in writing to the allegations of anomalies.

“ECI considers political parties, as priority stakeholders, of course the voters being the prime & deeply values views, suggestions, questions coming from political parties,” it said. “Commission would respond in writing with full factual & procedural matrix uniformly adopted across the country.”

In the Assembly election held in November, the ruling alliance comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Shiv Sena group led by former Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and the Nationalist Congress Party faction led by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar won 230 out of the 288 seats. The Maha Vikas Aghadi won 46 seats.

However, just five months earlier, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance had suffered a setback in Maharashtra during the Lok Sabha election, winning 17 out the state’s 48 constituencies. The Opposition INDIA bloc had won 29 seats.

Of these, the Congress had the got the highest number of seats (13). The BJP was reduced to nine seats.

In the aftermath of the Assembly election, the Congress had submitted a memorandum to the Election Commission, expressing concerns about the alleged “arbitrary deletion of voters and subsequent addition” of more than 10,000 voters in each constituency from the final voter lists.

The Election Commission had, however, maintained 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.