Far from subsiding, the controversy over electoral irregularities has consumed nearly the entire Parliament session, intensifying further after the charged debate on Operation Sindoor. If the Election Commission — backed unequivocally by the BJP — believed that public outrage, especially over large-scale voter list manipulation, would vanish after a couple of days in the headlines, that belief has been decisively shattered.

The Modi government, clinging to its refusal to allow any discussion on the issue — especially the voter list revision process in Bihar — has effectively chosen to let the session grind to a halt. Yet, stonewalling in Parliament has done nothing to bury the matter. On the contrary, suspicion surrounding the Election Commission’s conduct has deepened, especially after the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha publicly exposed systematic voter list rigging in recent elections, with damning evidence pointing to the 2024 general polls.

That growing distrust took visible shape on August 11, when MPs from across the opposition spectrum marched from Parliament to the Election Commission’s office, confronting the body with sharp questions about its role and impartiality. At the heart of the uproar is the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, first rolled out in Bihar but now intended for nationwide implementation.

The concerns raised in Bihar have fused with wider allegations of large-scale voter list manipulation — charges that are not new, but have been consistently brushed aside. Well before the last general election, the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi, and the opposition alliance in Maharashtra had all accused the Commission of presiding over similar fraud. They now allege that the EC did nothing to investigate or prevent such malpractice, further undermining faith in the fairness of the electoral process.

With the BJP shielding it, the Election Commission appears increasingly brazen in its opacity and evasiveness — traits that have become hallmarks of the Modi regime’s style of governance. Two recent incidents stand out.

Most strikingly, the EC’s reaction to the Leader of the Opposition’s press conference was not to examine the detailed allegations — which were backed by the Commission’s own records — but to demand that complainants submit affidavits before it would even consider an investigation. The evidence, presented through the example of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency, was staggering. Despite trailing the Congress candidate in seven out of eight assembly segments, the BJP managed to secure the seat, thanks to an improbable lead from the Mahadevapura assembly segment — a lead achieved, the data suggests, through the creation of over one lakh fake voters.

The methods were varied and blatant: roughly 12,000 duplicate entries; about 40,000 fake addresses, including 30,000 with nothing but zeroes for addresses and another 9,000 with only the name of a locality; 10,452 bulk entries tied to a handful of addresses, with up to eighty votes linked to a single one-room home; and 4,132 voter IDs either without photographs or with images so tiny as to be useless for identification. Most egregious was the misuse of Form-6 — meant for registering new, typically young voters — to add 33,692 people aged sixty or seventy as “first-time” voters.

Any one of these irregularities should have triggered alarm bells. They do not require elaborate forensic investigation; some are so obvious they can be verified with a basic site visit. In fact, even within the tightly controlled media environment, a few independent outlets have confirmed the presence of bogus bulk-voting addresses and multiple registrations. Yet, the Election Commission has shown no inclination to investigate.

Instead, it hides behind procedural roadblocks, insisting on affidavits and formalities as if the authenticity of its own records were in doubt.

This is not just bureaucratic inertia — it is an institutional abdication of responsibility at the very core of democracy. By refusing to confront credible evidence of voter list rigging, the Election Commission is not merely failing in its duty; it is eroding the very legitimacy of the electoral process. And as long as it is propped up by the ruling party’s political cover, the danger is clear: what is being stolen is not just individual votes, but the public’s faith that their votes matter at all.


The author is an independent journalist. The views are personal.