Pune, Aug 12 Political analyst Tehseen Poonawalla on Tuesday raised pointed questions at the Election Commission of India (ECI) after Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, alleged that two voters — Aditya Srivastava and Vishal Singh — were registered in multiple states.
He demanded clarity on what action the ECI is taking against Booth Level Officers (BLOs) allegedly responsible for such discrepancies.
Speaking to IANS, Tehseen Poonawalla said: "What kind of electoral roll is this? Aditya Srivastava is getting jobs in Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh. In one single-bedroom home, there are 80 registered voters -- and they aren’t even from the same religion. In another house, 46 people are registered, yet only three senior citizens actually live there. The ECI claims that BLOs will correct such errors -- but what are they really doing? What action has been taken?"
"This is the Election Commission of India, not the East India Company. The ECI is busy demanding affidavits from Opposition leaders. Why doesn’t it submit affidavits to the Opposition? If the Opposition is lying, why not file a case against them? Because these voter rolls are under their watch — they either exist as they are, or they don’t," he added.
Poonawalla also questioned the legal avenues available to challenge such irregularities: "Under which section should the Opposition lodge a complaint? The Representation of the People Act clearly allows objections to electoral rolls within one month of their publication. Such objections must be filed with the returning officer — but who exactly is the returning officer in these cases?"
Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Navdeep Rinwa has dismissed Gandhi’s claims. According to the Congress leader, data extracted from the ECI’s website on March 16, 2025, showed Aditya Srivastava and Vishal Singh registered in Varanasi and Lucknow constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, as well as in other states.
On July 31, Gandhi delivered a 22-page presentation, lasting over an hour, on alleged voter list irregularities. Using Karnataka’s Mahadevpura Assembly seat as a case study, he claimed that Congress could have won 16 seats instead of nine had such duplications been prevented.
Gandhi further accused the ECI of deliberately providing non-machine-readable voter lists to hinder fraud detection, revealing that his team sifted through paper stacks "seven feet high" over six months to compile evidence.
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