Rahul Gandhi Vs Election Commission: Is India losing faith in its elections?

KAKALI DAS

Indian democracy is facing one of its most serious credibility crises in decades. The Election Commission of India, once celebrated as the impartial guardian of elections, is today under attack from all sides.

Allegations of large-scale voter fraud, duplicate names, fake addresses, and wrongful deletions are flying thick and fast. The opposition, led by Rahul Gandhi, accuses the Commission of working hand in glove with the ruling BJP.

The BJP in turn says that opposition parties themselves benefit from irregularities. When both sides call each other out, citizens are left wondering whether the vote, the very core of democracy, still carries meaning.

Rahul Gandhi Vs Election Commission: Is India losing faith in its elections?

The storm is building just as Bihar, one of India’s largest states, heads into elections later this year. Over eight crore people are expected to vote, but the electoral rolls themselves have become a battlefield. The story began on June 24, when the Election Commission ordered a Special Intensive Revision of Bihar’s voter rolls.

This was the first such revision in 22 years. Four lakh officials and volunteers were deployed across the state, going door to door to verify records. The purpose, the Commission said, was to clean up the rolls, removing names of the deceased, those who had shifted elsewhere, duplicate entries, and at the same time including young voters who had just turned 18.

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On paper, this was an administrative exercise. In practice, it triggered outrage. The timing was suspect: Bihar was reeling under floods, which displaced thousands and destroyed vital documents. The opposition questioned why such a revision had to be conducted just months before elections, and under conditions where vulnerable people, especially the poor and minorities, were at risk of being excluded.

To make matters worse, new rules required those born after 1987 to provide not only their own birth certificates but also those of their parents. Aadhaar cards and MNREGA cards were not accepted as proof. For many, especially daily wage workers and rural families, this was an impossible demand.

Rahul Gandhi took the battle national. On August 7, he held a press conference, claiming he had irrefutable evidence of fraud. He pointed to Mahadevapura in Bengaluru, a BJP stronghold, where he alleged over one lakh fake entries had been allowed to vote. He gave precise figures: 11,000 duplicate votes, 40,000 invalid addresses, 10,000 bulk votes, 4,000 fake photos, and 33,000 fraudulent new voters.

He called this a “crime against the Constitution” and declared that Indian democracy no longer existed. According to him, the BJP needed 25 more seats for a majority in the Lok Sabha, and those seats were “stolen.” In Karnataka alone, he claimed Congress should have won 16 seats but narrowly lost 7 of them due to manipulation.

The BJP counter-attacked swiftly. Minister Anurag Thakur dismissed the charges as hypocrisy. He pointed out that irregularities were also reported in seats won by the opposition: Rahul Gandhi’s Raebareli, Priyanka Gandhi’s Wayanad, Abhishek Banerjee’s seat in Bengal, and Akhilesh Yadav’s Kannauj.

If Rahul Gandhi truly believed the election process was fraudulent, Thakur asked, would he resign from Raebareli? This tit-for-tat exposed a disturbing reality: both the ruling party and the opposition were questioning the legitimacy of elections. If everyone insists fraud is rampant, then who can the people trust?

Back in Bihar, the revision exercise produced shocking numbers. Around 65 lakh names were struck off the rolls. Opposition leaders Tejashwi Yadav and Dipankar Bhattacharya moved the Supreme Court on August 14, demanding that the Commission publish the details in a searchable format.

They argued that the Commission was hiding information by removing user-friendly, searchable PDFs and replacing them with scanned images that could not be easily analyzed. For individual voters, it was still possible to check one’s status using the EPIC number. But for political parties, researchers, and watchdogs, the lack of transparency was glaring.

The Supreme Court ordered the Commission to publish full details online and also physically in every panchayat and block office. The Commission complied within 56 hours. Voters who believed their names were wrongly deleted were given until September 1 to file claims. The data released showed that 22 lakh names were deleted as deceased, 36 lakh as shifted or untraceable, and 7 lakh as duplicates. These figures immediately raised eyebrows. Could 22 lakh deaths really go unreported over 20 years? Could 36 lakh voters have “shifted” or vanished?

The Election Commission called a rare Sunday press conference to defend itself. Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar, along with colleagues Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, explained that the unreported deaths had piled up over two decades, and the clean-up was overdue. They said errors dating back to before 2003 were now being corrected, and that three lakh such mistakes had already been fixed.

On allegations of dubious house numbers, the Commission clarified that “house number 0” was assigned to homeless citizens to ensure their right to vote. On duplication, they said a person could be registered in more than one constituency, but voting in two places was a crime punishable under law. On demands to release CCTV footage of polling stations, the Commission argued this would breach privacy, particularly of women voters, and could be misused in the age of AI.

The Commission struck a defiant tone. “We stand like a rock with all voters,” Kumar declared. “The sun still rises in the east. Repeating a lie will not make it the truth.” These strong words, however, did little to reassure the opposition. Rahul Gandhi launched a Vote AdhikarYatra in Bihar, insisting that the Commission was not independent.

The opposition also announced plans to bring an impeachment motion against the Chief Election Commissioner. Constitutionally, this is nearly impossible—it requires a two-thirds majority in Parliament, which the opposition lacks. But as a symbolic protest, it signals their loss of trust.

It is important to note that under Clause 19, the Chief Election Commissioner and other commissioners have immunity from legal action for decisions taken in office. This means accountability is largely political, not judicial. That is why credibility matters so much: if the Commission loses the people’s faith, legal shields will not protect its standing.

Meanwhile, further controversies keep emerging. Kerala Congress recently shared electoral rolls from villages near Jaipur, where every house was listed under number “9999999.” Just as “house number 0” raised questions, this anomaly too is being seized upon by critics.

What does all this mean for democracy? The heart of the issue is trust. Elections are the mechanism through which citizens exercise sovereignty.

If voter lists are riddled with dead names, duplicates, fake addresses, and wrongful deletions, the foundation of democracy is shaken. If both ruling and opposition parties claim fraud, and the public starts believing them, then faith in elections collapses. Without that faith, governments, no matter how elected, lack legitimacy.

The timing of these allegations also raises questions. If Congress and its allies believe manipulation is widespread, why raise the issue now? The opposition has won elections in Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu in recent years. If the Commission was colluding with the BJP, why did it not prevent those victories? Are irregularities limited to certain states, or do they exist everywhere? Is this a systemic failure or targeted manipulation? These questions have no easy answers.

What is undeniable, however, is that trust in the Election Commission is eroding. A study by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, reported in The Hindu, found that distrust in the Commission in Uttar Pradesh rose from 16 percent to 31 percent in just one year. In Delhi, the figure was even higher. One in three citizens no longer trusts the Commission to be impartial. For the world’s largest democracy, this is a dangerous signal.

The Supreme Court will eventually deliver its verdict on the Bihar voter list revision. But court orders cannot alone restore faith. What is needed is transparency, fairness, and consistency. Citizens remember the days of T.N. Seshan, the legendary Election Commissioner who took on political parties without fear and restored public confidence. The current Commission must ask itself: does it still command that kind of respect?

Because at the end of the day, democracy is not about institutions alone—it is about people’s belief in those institutions. If citizens believe their vote counts, democracy lives. If they do not, democracy becomes a hollow ritual. India, a country of 1.4 billion people, cannot afford that erosion. The stakes could not be higher.

21-08-2025

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