Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha and Congress MP from Raibareli, Rahul Gandhi on Saturday alleged that the Maharashtra Assembly Elections 2024 was a blueprint for rigging democracy.

In an article he wrote for a newspaper and shared on X, the Congress leader explained, step by step, how the alleged rigging happened.

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“The scale of 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, revealing a step-by-step playbook,” he wrote.

He said the removal of Chief Justice of India from the panel to select Chief Election Commissioner was the first step.

“The 2023 Election Commissioners Appointment Act ensured that Election Commissioners are effectively chosen by the Prime Minister and the Home Minister by a 2:1 majority since the third member, the Leader of the Opposition, can always be outvoted. These gentlemen are also the top contestants in the contest whose umpires are being chosen. The decision to place a cabinet minister instead of the Chief Justice on the selection committee does not pass the smell test. Ask yourself, why would someone go out of their way to remove a neutral arbiter in an important institution? To ask the question is to know the answer,” said the Leader of Opposition.

“Inflating the voter register with fake voters and voter turnout figures were also part of the alleged rigging of the state assembly polls.

The polling turnout at 5 pm was 58.22 per cent. Even after voting closed, however, turnout kept increasing more and more. The final turnout was reported only the next morning to be 66.05 per cent. This unprecedented 7.83 percentage point increase is equivalent to 76 lakh voters — much higher than previous Vidhan Sabha elections in Maharashtra,” he highlighted.

Rahul alleged that Pinpoint targeted bogus voting turned BJP into Bradman.

“There are about 1 lakh booths in Maharashtra, but most added voters were targeted in only about 12,000 booths across 85 constituencies in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had performed poorly in the last Lok Sabha elections. That’s an average of over 600 voters at each booth after 5 pm. Optimistically assuming that each voter needs a minute to vote, voting would need to continue for 10 hours. Since this never happened, it begs the question — how were the extra votes cast? Not surprisingly, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won most of these 85 seats.”

He cited the example of Kamthi constituency where the Congress had won almost the same number of votes in both 2024 Lok Sabha and state assembly elections but BJP increased 56,000 votes on accountmof 35,000 news voters which were added between these two polls.

“In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the Indian National Congress (INC) polled 1.36 lakh votes in Kamthi while the BJP polled 1.19 lakh votes. In the 2024 Vidhan Sabha elections, the INC polled 1.34 lakh, a roughly similar number to its earlier performance. But the BJP’s score jumped to 1.75 lakh, an increase of 56,000. This jump came from the bank of 35,000 new voters added in Kamthi between the two elections,” he wrote in the article.

Rahul further alleged the evidence were concealed and when the Opposition approached the Election Commission of India, it met with “silence and even agrression.”

“Even worse, only one month after the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha elections, and following a High Court order directing the EC to share videography and CCTV footage of voting in a polling station, the central government — after consulting the EC — amended the 1961 Conduct of Election Rules Section 93(2)(a) to restrict access to CCTV footage and electronic records,” he said.

Rahul further claimed that this “match-fixing” of Maharashtra will next come to Bihar and everywhere where the BJP is losing.