Quit stalling: on Aland, Rahul Gandhi’s press meet, the ECI’s response Politics & News

In yet another press conference, Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi levelled serious allegations against the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the Chief Election Commissioner of India. He accused the ECI of inaction in a case of fraud involving electoral rolls in the Aland constituency in the run-up to the 2023 Karnataka Assembly elections. While his allegations in an earlier press conference, on electoral roll inconsistencies in the Mahadevapura constituency in Karnataka, did not really add up to the definite existence of a ploy to aid a particular party, his accusations on Aland are a smoking gun — that attempts were made at manipulation, to the Congress’s disadvantage, in a close contest with the Bharatiya Janata Party. The Aland findings, brought out first in an investigative report in The Hindu earlier this month, did not pertain to any actual effect on the elections. This is because the ECI did manage to stop the fraudulent deletion of nearly 6,000 voters after miscreants filed Form-7 applications designed to remove the names of legitimate voters. But Mr. Gandhi’s allegations, taking off from The Hindu’s report, are centred on the fact that a CID probe into the fraudulent activity has been stalled due to the ECI’s refusal to provide access to crucial technical documentation, leaving investigators unable to follow the digital footprint of the fraud, buried in a maze of shifting IP addresses and phone numbers.

The ECI’s reaction is puzzling — it acknowledges that fraudulent attempts to delete voter names were made and that it had shared details with the police investigating the case, but it does not address the core allegation about not responding to the CID’s repeated requests for “destination IP and destination port” data, which are necessary to pinpoint device data and, in turn, the identity and location of the fraudsters. Without this, it would be akin to finding a needle in a haystack. The ECI must respond specifically to these allegations and to the requests made by the Karnataka CID. It should also work to prevent Form-7 misuse, especially to stop voter removal by third parties. At a time when the ECI’s credibility has taken a hit — largely of its own doing given the manner in which it has gone about the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar — its dismissive reaction to the serious allegations in the Aland case is unnecessary and counter-productive. Mr. Gandhi and his party should not limit their critique of the ECI, the SIR process and inconsistencies in electoral rolls to rhetoric and a regurgitation of known data. They must do more to raise public consciousness about the need to have a fair and just electoral process.