Devendra Fadnavis Disappoints, Dodges and Dreams Up Figures In His Rejoinder to Rahul Gandhi
Pyara Lal Garg
Highlights:
- The Maharashtra chief minister in his response to Rahul Gandhi has cited incorrect figures or figures that are not publicly available, such as the number of voters who voted in the 2024 assembly election after 6 pm
- He has issued a point-by-point rebuttal to Gandhi but did not address his contention that more electors were registered for the assembly election than the state's estimated adult population
- Fadnavis's use of terms like ‘urban Naxal’ against Gandhi do nothing but muddy the argument
In a parliamentary democracy, when the leader of the opposition raises a pertinent issue, that too in writing, the least the ruling party must do is respond to his averments point-by-point.
On that singular point, one must appreciate Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s lieutenants, Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, Union minister Bhupender Yadav and Union minister and BJP chief J.P. Nadda for engaging with the issue that Rahul Gandhi has raised. It is such engagement that helps sustain democracy.
But unfortunately, Fadnavis's engagement this time makes one fear for the future of democracy.
Here is what Gandhi asked: does your vote actually go to the candidate you cast it for, and are election results being impacted by ‘ghost voters’? In other words, can we trust our voting process?
There cannot be a more crucial issue in a democracy. All democracies are contests for the people’s mandate, known through a balloting exercise overseen by an umpire. The neutrality of the umpire is the core principle of this process. Even a scintilla of doubt that the umpire might cast a sideways glance towards one side can throw democracy into disarray.
Gandhi has marshalled arguments and statistics and done exactly that. Fadnavis needs to do better than hurl expletives like ‘urban Naxal’, and Yadav has to come up with a more forceful argument than his comment that Gandhi’s exertions were a result of “frustration of staying out of power”.
The Election Commission (EC), of course, has no control over the selection of election commissioners or the chief election commissioner, but Fadnavis’s explanation that under earlier prime ministers the Union government directly appointed election commissioners and that under Modi this was changed, falls woefully short of telling the complete truth.
The Modi government legislated an eternal bias into the EC by forming a three-member panel comprising the prime minister, a Union minister nominated by the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. Even if the latter were to be replaced by god himself, the election commissioners will still be nothing more than the government’s hand-picked people with a 2-1 majority, god being in the minority. Poor mortal Gandhi would be helpless.
All other issues raised by Gandhi fall within the EC’s domain. The registration of electors, the deletion of voters on account of complaints received, as well as allegations of inflated electoral rolls, inflated voter turnout data, inexplicable delays in placing crucial data in the public domain and a host of other aspects are clearly down the EC’s alley.
Also, a response by the EC would have carried more weight rather than a vituperative attack by Fadnavis, particularly when Gandhi has all but proven that Fadnavis is a direct beneficiary of the murky game.
Also read: In Bihar, Is the Election Commission Revising the Electoral Rolls or Compiling an NRC?
There is still time for the EC to prove Gandhi wrong, and it has all the ammunition it needs at its disposal. Simply release every bit of documentation – hard and soft copies – regarding voters and voting, electronic footage etc. After all, these records are retained to thwart exactly such a challenge to the legitimacy of the ballot. If that legitimacy is gone, then democracy is dead.
Between Gandhi on the one side and Fadnavis, Nadda, Yadav et al on the other, the world is watching a war of narratives. What we need are facts.
Is the EC sticking to its own rulebook to ensure impartiality and fairness? What are the grounds for the EC to refuse to put in the public domain the applications, complaints and procedural steps of registering new electors with regard to Form 6, and the deletion of names on complaints by others as codified in Form 7 and the elaborate instruction for the same?
Is the EC taking steps for the safe custody of the voting apparatus? The apex court had to direct this constitutional body not to delete the data of the symbol loading unit at the end of voting and keep the same in its safe custody for 45 days.
Why did the Union government amend the rules to empower the EC to refuse the supply of electronic data? Why was such an amendment made exactly when the Punjab and Haryana high court had directed the EC to supply the same to a petitioner?
Irrespective of whether the leader of opposition is making out a credible case for possible fraud, or whether messrs Fadnavis, Yadav or Nadda are ‘patriotically’ defending their faith in the EC, this regime's hurling the epithet of ‘urban Naxal’ further muddies the argument. Sample this argument by Fadnavis:
“[Modi and Amit Shah] have set the goal of a Naxal [a term used interchangeably for Maoist]-free India by March 2026, and achieving this goal is not impossible … However, one thing must be understood: It is easier to eliminate the Naxalite holding a gun. But we have a much longer battle ahead against the system known as “urban Naxals”, which systematically tries to destroy all of India’s constitutional institutions.”
Fadnavis, who as a relatively young politician one presumes would bring a whiff of fresh air into a moribund politics, knows all too well that electoral fraud on an industrial scale is the kind of thing that “systematically tries to destroy all of India’s constitutional institutions”.
In his rejoinder to Gandhi’s piece last month, he has been caught playing with figures not even on the official record of the EC or the Union of India. Let us study his contentions point by point.
Increase in the number of electors between Lok Sabha and assembly elections
In the year 2004, the increase in the number of voters between the 2004 Lok Sabha elections and the 2004 assembly elections was 29.53 lakh.
In 2009, the increase in the number of voters between the Lok Sabha elections and the assembly elections was 30.14 lakh. In 2014, this number was 27.29 lakh. In 2019, it was 11.61 lakh. In 2024, it was was 40.8 lakh.
Fadnavis, who has only provided the percentage increase between the number of electors registered for Lok Sabha elections and assembly elections in Maharashtra in a given year, does not account for how the increase in voters in 2024 in absolute terms (40.8 lakh) is much higher than in previous years, and how it represents a jump in an otherwise declining trend beginning in 2004-2009.
The question of polling percentages for the November 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections
The polling rate as of 5 pm, one hour before polls closed, was 58.22%, which went up by 7.83 percentage points to the final figure of 66.05% issued the next day (it has since been revised to 66.57% in the EC's statistical report for the election released later).
The polling rate of 7.83% per hour in that last hour of voting is around two percentage points higher than the average polling rate of 5.82% per hour for the rest of the day. In absolute numbers, 7.83% of the electorate amounts to 75.97 lakh votes.
Even if this quantum is divided among all 1,00,427 polling stations, the same turns out to more than 75 votes per hour, whereas normal polling per hour on average, including brisk polling, is 56.5 votes.
It is also difficult to understand why the EC suddenly shifted to releasing the turnout as of 5 pm instead of the usual 7 pm during the Maharashtra assembly polls last year without any cogent reason or benefit.
Further, if the turnout percentage figures at 5 pm could be uploaded by the EC at 6:14 pm, then what (or who) prevented the EC from uploading the actual voter turnout at 6 pm soon thereafter?
Having uploaded a turnout percentage figure at 6:14 pm, the EC next did so at 11:53 pm. It has not divulged the reason why it took around six hours to upload the 6 pm data, while the 5 pm data was uploaded within one and a quarter hour (74 minutes)!
And why was it that the rise in the final, 11:45 pm voter turnout figure in Jharkhand from the 5 pm figure was only 0.86 percentage points? Incidentally (or consequently?), the NDA lost that battle. In comparison, in Maharashtra, the same figure rose by 7.83 percentage points, from 58.22% to 66.05%.
Fadnavis, in his long and confusing defence, has failed to explain why similar (questionable) phenomena were not observed in the simultaneous second phase of the Jharkhand assembly elections.
Also read: All We Need from the Election Commission Is Full Transparency
Fadnavis is also factually wrong when he quotes the 5 pm figure for the second phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls for Maharashtra:
“Moreover, this didn’t just happen in Maharashtra. In the second phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the voter turnout figure given at 5 pm was 60.96%, which was finalised at 66.71% the next day. The increase was 5.75%. But are you going to hide that fact because you won that election? Previously, the final voting figures would come late at night; now, the 5 pm figure is released, and the final figure comes the next day.”
Even though Fadnavis appears to broaden the scope from Maharashtra, his reference to Gandhi ‘winning that election’ suggests he is referring to the INDIA bloc winning six of eight seats that went to polls in Maharashtra in the second phase (and ultimately 30 of the state's Lok Sabha seats overall). The fact of the matter is that the 60.96% figure Fadnavis refers to does not apply to Maharashtra but for all 88 seats that voted in the second phase as of 7 pm.
Even the hiked voter turnout figure of 66.71% uploaded on April 30, 2024 is again for all constituencies and not for Maharashtra alone.
Fadnavis is also factually wrong because the EC has to date never declared the 5 pm turnout figure. For the Lok Sabha polls, the first release of figures by the EC was at 7 pm. Moreover, it did not release state-wise figures on the day of polling (April 26), only doing so four days later.
For want of a better word, one can only say that the chief minister sounds ridiculous when he writes:
“The claim that the voting percentage suddenly increased is a huge joke. To understand how the percentage rose in the last hour, one must look at the hourly voting rate. The average polling rate throughout the day was 5.83 per cent per hour. So what new information are you revealing by stating there was a 7.83 per cent increase in the last hour? Is Rahul Gandhi unaware that 5 pm to 6 pm is also a polling hour, and everyone present in the queue at the booth by 6 pm is allowed to cast their vote?”
He goes on to say that:
“The number of total votes cast [in the assembly election] after 6 pm was 17,70,867. Based on the day’s average voting rate, 97,103.32 votes were cast per minute across 1.427 lakh polling stations. Therefore, if we calculate the average for the votes cast after 6 pm, the additional time taken was only 18 minutes and 23 seconds.”
Fadnavis’s imagination has little to do with hard facts. Maharashtra had 1,00,427 polling stations, but neither the chief minister nor the Indian Express, the newspaper that published his contentions, fact-checked the piece. So Fadnavis incorrectly cited a figure of 1.427 lakh polling stations.
Fadnavis is again wrong on votes polled after 6 pm. The fact remains that the EC, to date, has not released any such figure (strangely quoted by Fadnavis) of 17,70,867. If Fadnavis is in possession of data not in the public domain, that speaks volumes for both the institution in question (the EC) and the chief minister.
He has further distributed all hiked votes across all polling stations equally, which defies all statistical principles.
The chief minister, a direct beneficiary of the electoral outcome, has failed to explain that if, as per his own calculation, all voters standing in queue had cast their vote within 18 minutes and 23 seconds after the end of scheduled time, then why did the EC take until 11:53 pm to post its final figure for the day? The commission also failed to upload its final figure of 66.05% even at 11:53 pm, when only a figure of 65.02% was uploaded.
Who is indulging in statistical sorcery, Fadnavis or the EC?
Fadnavis has conspicuously (maybe intelligently) kept mum about Gandhi’s contention that the number of registered voters (9.7 crore) exceeded the total estimated adult population of the state (9.5 crore).
As per the 2011 census, the population of Maharashtra was 11.24 crore (11,23,74,333), out of which 5.83 crore (5,82,55,227) were male and 5.41 crore (5,41,19,106) female.
Out of this, around 1.33 crore fell in the 0-6 age group, while 30% of the population was aged 0-17 years.
The National Commission on Population in 2019 released five-year projections for the populations of India and its states. For Maharashtra, it projected an adult population of 9.14 crore in 2021 and 9.81 crore in 2026; one could estimate the corresponding figure for 2024 – as the Congress has done – at around 9.5-9.6 crore.
Fadnavis has also given an incorrect figure for young voters in Maharashtra as 26.46 lakh (26,46,608), contrary to the figure given by the EC, which is 22.22 lakh as on November 20, 2024 vide No. ECI/PN/163/2024.
Demands
Why is it that the videography and count of those standing in queue after the end of the scheduled time for polls are not provided?
Why is it that the state amended rule 93(2) of the Conduct of Election Rules only to scuttle court orders and deprive citizens of vital information?
We, the people, demand:
- Videography of voters after the scheduled poll time,
- Videography of the number of slips distributed and announced for those standing in queue,
- Videography of the number of votes polled at the end of the scheduled poll time,
- Videography of the announcement of votes polled at the close of polls,
- Videography of the sealing and transport of EVMs
- Videography of the custody of machines
- Proof of Forms 6 and 7 and all procedures adopted as laid down for the addition of voters and the deletion of voters.
Pyara Lal Garg is co-author, along with M.G. Devasahayam, of the Vote for Democracy's report on the Maharashtra elections. A public intellectual, he is also a former registrar of the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences.
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