Rahul Gandhi’s allegations: Is transparency the EC’s best weapon to counter them?

The ‘atom bomb’ that Rahul Gandhi was talking about has finally dropped. At a press conference on August 7, Mr Gandhi gave a presentation where he sought to show how, in one assembly segment of a Lok Sabha constituency in Karnataka, more than 1 lakh fake votes were cast.

Mr Gandhi said a team in the Congress spent six months sifting through voter rolls data in hard copy format sourced from the Election Commission, and they identified five ways in which fake votes were cast: duplicate voters, fake and invalid voters, bulk voters in a single address, invalid photos, and misuse of Form 6 to add so-called new voters.

Mr Gandhi also alleged that this was a template, and it can be, and has probably been, replicated in elections across the country. Mr Gandhi has made two demands to the Election Commission (EC): that it share voter data in electronic text readable format, and that it make available CCTV footage of polling booths.

The EC has asked Mr Gandhi to formally submit his charges under oath. How credible are these charges? And how justified are Mr Gandhi’s demands? What is the road to accountability in the context of these specific charges?

Guest: Poonam Agarwal, investigative journalist and author of ‘India Inked: Elections in the World’s Largest Democracy’.

Host: G Sampath

Produced and edited by: Jude Francis Weston

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