Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance won the Maharashtra Assembly elections through “fraud like never before”.

Addressing the 86th All India Congress Committee Convention in Ahmedabad, Kharge said: “There has never been a fraud like the one that happened in Maharashtra polls, which was aimed at destroying democracy and defeating the Opposition.”

Kharge also questioned the use of electronic voting machines, claiming that while the world is shifting to ballot papers, India continues to use EVMs.

“This is all fraud,” he said. “They ask us to prove it. You have devised such techniques that benefit the ruling party and put the opposition at a disadvantage.”

He added that the Opposition party’s leaders and lawyers are working towards uncovering the fraud.

The Mahayuti alliance, comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Shiv Sena group led by Eknath Shinde and the Nationalist Congress Party group led by Ajit Pawar, won 230 out of 288 seats in the Maharashtra Assembly election. 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 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 just 46 seats.

The Congress has accused the Election Commission of tampering with voter data during the Maharashtra Assembly elections that took place in November.

The party in November submitted a memorandum to the poll body, 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, 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.

In February, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi once again urged the poll body to explain a series of alleged anomalies in Maharashtra’s voter list, and urged the Election Commission 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.

Besides, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee also accused the BJP of colluding with the Election Commission to add fake voters to electoral lists in order to win the Assembly elections in Delhi and Maharashtra.

Days after Banerjee’s allegations, the poll body said it would solve the problem of duplicate voter identity numbers having been issued in different states within three months by ensuring a unique national EPIC number to all voters.

EPIC, or the Electors Photo Identification Card, is issued by the Election Commission and serves as identification proof for Indian citizens over the age of 18 to cast their vote in elections. The EPIC number is the voter ID card number.

Also read: Voter rolls, not just EVMs: How Opposition is coming to a new understanding on BJP’s alleged rigging