On August 9, 2025, India’s Election Commission (ECI) found itself at the center of a storm, facing a barrage of allegations that have reignited deep concerns about the fairness and transparency of the country’s electoral processes. The latest controversy, sparked by a detailed presentation from Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, has amplified longstanding worries about the ECI’s impartiality and the integrity of the voting system.
Gandhi’s accusations are nothing short of explosive. He claimed that more than 100,000 fake votes were created in the Mahadevapura Assembly segment of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency, aiming to secure victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 general election. According to The Hindu, Gandhi’s presentation outlined five categories of alleged electoral malpractice, including multiple registrations for single voters within the same constituency, the use of identical Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers across different states, and suspiciously large numbers of voters registered at the same addresses.
While some anomalies—like identical EPIC numbers in different states—had been addressed by the ECI earlier this year, Gandhi’s claim that party workers discovered booth slips indicating multiple votes cast by the same person in a single booth strikes at the heart of the “one person, one vote” principle. If verified, this would represent a grave violation of democratic norms.
Gandhi’s allegations don’t end with Mahadevapura. He suggested these discrepancies are part of a broader, calculated strategy to benefit the BJP in closely contested constituencies across India. The Congress party had previously raised alarms about sudden surges in electoral registrations ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly elections, arguing that these contributed to the BJP and its allies’ unexpected victories—though, as The Hindu notes, those claims lacked the detailed documentation now presented for Mahadevapura.
However, the leap from identifying registration flaws to asserting deliberate fraud orchestrated by the ECI in collusion with the ruling party remains, at least for now, unproven. The BJP’s margin of victory in Mahadevapura jumped from about 44,500 votes in 2023 to more than 114,000 in 2024, even though the number of new electors on the rolls was about 52,600 and the actual increase in voters was only around 20,000. As The Hindu points out, establishing a direct causal link between these discrepancies and the election outcome requires more than circumstantial evidence.
The ECI’s response has been defensive. The Commission has demanded that any evidence be submitted “under oath”—a requirement that, according to legal experts cited by The Hindu, may not actually apply in this context. The ECI has also attributed many electoral discrepancies to political parties’ own failures to raise objections during the registration process. But perhaps more troubling is the ECI’s practice of releasing voter information in bulky image PDFs rather than structured, searchable text formats. This approach, critics argue, makes it nearly impossible for parties and civil society groups to verify rolls efficiently.
Transparency, or the lack thereof, is a recurring theme in the current debate. On polling day, a suspicious spike in voting percentages was observed after 5 PM, prompting opposition parties to demand access to the voter register, booth CCTV footage, and hourly turnout data to verify the authenticity of the figures. Instead of complying, the ECI amended the Conduct of Elections Rules to deny such information in the future, effectively closing the door on meaningful scrutiny, according to India Herald.
This pattern of opacity has been visible elsewhere. The ECI’s scheduling of elections—such as splitting the Maharashtra and Haryana polls and stretching West Bengal’s election over seven phases—has attracted allegations of political motivation, with critics suggesting these decisions were designed to give the ruling party an edge. In political disputes involving the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the ECI recognized factions based solely on legislative strength, ignoring organizational history and base, a move that departs from the Supreme Court’s established Sadiq Ali precedent.
When allegations of Model Code of Conduct violations are raised against ruling party figures, the ECI has often responded by issuing notices to opposition leaders instead, further fueling accusations that it has shifted from a neutral referee to an enabler of the government. As India Herald put it, “If the referee joins one team, the fairness of the match—and the survival of democracy itself—is gravely endangered.”
Concerns about the accuracy of the electoral rolls have also been heightened by the ECI’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Bihar. The Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, has alleged that the SIR is being used to deny some citizens their right to vote. Data already show higher deletions among women electors than men in Bihar, a worrying trend given that most out-migrants are male. According to the National Family Health Survey, the literacy rate among women aged 15-49 in Bihar was just 55% in 2019-21, making this group particularly vulnerable to erroneous deletions during the enumeration process.
Broader issues plague India’s electoral administration. These include lax enforcement of campaign finance laws and the Model Code of Conduct, tallying Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs) from only a small fraction of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) rather than a statistically significant sample, and insufficient technical safeguards for both EVMs and the process of symbol loading. The ECI has resisted calls to retain CCTV footage from polling booths and has often delayed publishing final turnout figures, further eroding public trust.
Underlying all these controversies is a fundamental crisis of confidence in the ECI as an institution. Its credibility depends not only on technical accuracy but also on the perception of impartiality and openness. The Supreme Court has recommended that the appointment process for Election Commissioners include the Chief Justice of India in the selection panel, a reform the government has so far sidestepped.
Rahul Gandhi’s allegations may not, as yet, constitute proof of deliberate fraud. But, as The Hindu contends, the Congress party’s findings perform a “valuable democratic function” by shining a light on systemic flaws. The appropriate response, experts argue, is not defensive stonewalling but comprehensive reform: regular and transparent auditing of voter rolls, improved technical safeguards for voting machines, stronger enforcement of regulations, and genuine consultation with all political parties.
Ultimately, the strength of any democracy rests on public faith in its institutions. The ECI’s willingness to embrace scrutiny, rather than shrink from it, could determine whether that faith is restored—or further eroded in the years to come.
