Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has accused Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of “shooting arrows in the dark” after the latter’s remarks on “vote theft” in the 2024 Maharashtra elections.
Gandhi had shared a Newslaundry investigation on X that stated that the Nagpur West constituency, Fadnavis’ seat, added 29,219 new voters between the 2024
Lok Sabha election and Maharashtra polls. The report quoted booth level officers from some of the booths with the highest rates of additions who claimed lapses in checks as mandated by the Election Commission’s own guidelines.
In his post, Gandhi, who has been alleging “rigging” in Maharashtra since last year, questioned the EC for being “silent or complicit” and demanded the “immediate release of machine-readable digital voter rolls and CCTV footage”.
In Maharashtra CM’s own constituency, the voter list grew by 8% in just 5 months.
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 24, 2025
Some booths saw a 20-50% surge.
BLOs reported unknown individuals casting votes.
Media uncovered thousands of voters with no verified address.
And the EC? Silent - or complicit.
These aren’t… pic.twitter.com/32q9dflfB9
Amid the controversy, the Chief Electoral Officers of Maharashtra and Haryana put out statements, reiterating that electoral rolls are prepared transparently and shared with all parties.
Electoral rolls are prepared transparently; copies were shared with recognised parties pic.twitter.com/u6HUCOOdsU
— ChiefElectoralOffice (@CEO_Maharashtra) June 24, 2025
Electoral rolls are prepared transparently; copies were shared with recognized parties pic.twitter.com/Fr98eAEkmP
— Chief Electoral Officer, Haryana (@ceoharyana) June 24, 2025
In the section on supervision and checks, the Election Commission’s manual on voter rolls specifies that the Chief Electoral Officer “shall give a detailed report” on state-wide health check of rolls, deviations noticed, and remedial action taken apart from an “account of checks maintained and supervision undertaken during the roll revision process”. Newslaundry had asked the Maharashtra CEO as well as the EC about documentary evidence of these checks. It remains to be seen whether the EC and CEO will put the “detailed report” in the public domain considering the scale of the allegations.
Fadnavis, in his reply to Gandhi’s tweet, claimed that the Congress won in many of the constituencies where voters increased by over 8 percent between the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.
Sharing data on the assembly results, Fadnavis said that in the West Nagpur constituency, adjacent to his South-West region, voters increased by 7 percent (27,065), and Congress candidate Vikas Thakre won the election.
“In North Nagpur, voters increased by 7% (29,348), and Nitin Raut from Congress won. In Pune district’s Wadgaon Sheri, voters increased by 10% (50,911), and Bapusaheb Pathare from the Sharad Pawar faction won.
In Malad West, voters increased by 11% (38,625), and your Congress party’s Aslam Shaikh won. In Mumbra, voters increased by 9% (46,041), and Jitendra Awhad from the Sharad Pawar faction won,” said Fadnavis.
झूठ बोले कौवा काटे
— Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) June 24, 2025
काले कौवे से डरियो…
राहुल गांधी,
माना की महाराष्ट्र की करारी हार की आपकी पीड़ा दिन प्रतिदिन बढ़ती जा रही है.
लेकिन कब तक हवा में तीर चलाते रहोगे?
वैसे आप की जानकारी के लिए, महाराष्ट्र में ऐसे 25 से अधिक चुनाव क्षेत्र है जहाँ 8% से अधिक मतदाता लोकसभा और… https://t.co/YtpuKNeUNE
He further suggested to Gandhi that it would have been “better if you had spoken to your own party’s long-time associates like Aslam Shaikh, Vikas Thakre, and Nitin Raut before this tweet. At least the Congress wouldn’t have performed so poorly due to a lack of communication.”
In October 2024, the Congress alleged EVM tampering in the Haryana assembly election, a claim which the ECI rejected. Four months after Gandhi accused the Election Commission of “indutrial-scale rigging” in Maharashtra assembly elections in 2024, the EC termed the claims “unsubstantiated” on June 7. The same day, the leader of opposition had written an op-ed in The Indian Express, doubling down on his allegations of voter list manipulation. Fadnavis also wrote an op-ed for the same publication, rebutting Gandhi’s allegations. The EC wrote to Gandhi on June 12, “inviting him to interact with the EC” over the issues raised by him.
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