Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday remarked that the Election Commission should answer the questions that he raised about alleged irregularities in the Maharashtra elections in his article earlier in the day if it has nothing to hide.

In an article published in The Indian Express on Saturday, Gandhi reiterated allegations that there had been “match-fixing” in the Maharashtra Assembly elections held in November. He alleged that there had been an “industrial-scale rigging involving the capture of our national institutions” during the elections.

The Election Commission, however, said that the allegations by the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha were “completely absurd”, ANI reported. It remarked that the entire election process, including the preparation of electoral rolls, takes place in the presence of representatives appointed by political parties.

In response, Gandhi said that “releasing unsigned, evasive notes to intermediaries” was not the way to respond to serious questions.

The Congress leader urged the poll panel to publish “consolidated, digital, machine-readable voter rolls” for recent Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, including the 2024 Maharashtra polls. He also called on the Election Commission to release all closed-circuit television footage from Maharashtra poll booths from after 5 pm on polling day.

“Evasion won’t protect your credibility,” Gandhi said to the Election Commission. “Telling the truth will.”

Maharashtra poll results glaringly strange: Rahul Gandhi

Gandhi claimed in the article in The Indian Express that the outcome of the Maharashtra polls was “glaringly strange”. He alleged that the scale of the alleged rigging was “so desperate that, despite all efforts to conceal it, tell-tale evidence has emerged from official statistics, without reliance on any nonofficial source…”

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti alliance had defeated the Maha Vikas Aghadi, which includes the Congress, in the Maharashtra elections.

He said that the contentious 2023 Election Commissioners Appointment Act had ensured that the election commissioners were “effectively chosen” by the prime minister and the Union home minister as they can outvote the leader of the Opposition in the appointment panel.

The Congress leader further alleged that the second step in rigging the polls had been to inflate the voter list with fake electors.

The Opposition leader was reiterating claims his party had made in February. The Congress had at the time urged the Election Commission to explain how the number of registered voters (9.7 crore) for the Maharashtra Assembly polls was more than the adult population of the state (9.5 crore).

At the time, Gandhi had also urged the poll panel 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.

Unsubstantiated allegations, says EC

The Election Commission said that attempts to defame it by parties that got an unfavourable verdict from voters were “completely absurd”, ANI reported.

It said that during the Maharashtra Assembly elections, an average of 58 lakh votes were polled per hour on an average. “Going by these average trends, nearly 116 lakh voters could have voted in last two hours,” it contended. “Therefore, casting of 65 lakh votes by electors in two hours is much below the average hourly voting trends.”

The Election Commission said that the Congress’ candidates or their authorised agents did not raise any “substantiated allegations” about abnormal voting, either before the returning officer or before the poll panel.

The poll panel also said that during the process to revise the electoral rolls, political parties appointed 1,03,727 agents, of which the Congress appointed 27,099. “Therefore, these unsubstantiated allegations raised against the Electoral Rolls of Maharashtra are affront to the rule of law,” it said.