An open letter to the Chief Justice of India.

Dear Sir,

I write to you as a citizen who fears that her vote is being stolen with the collusion of the Election Commission of India (ECI), whose job it is to conduct free and fair elections and ensure that we get the government we choose.

If there is one person in this country who can intervene now, it is you. The Constitution of India envisaged the Supreme Court as the independent institution that would safeguard the rights guaranteed to us citizens, and you sit at its head.

I would not have needed to approach you had the editors of newspapers and television news channels done their job honestly and held the authorities to account. If every newspaper and every television channel were to seriously report the findings of a six-month investigation by the opposition into the electoral system, the ECI would be forced to explain itself. But we cannot expect that anymore of the big media, whose editors have sold their conscience.

So, among the institutions expected to uphold democracy, the judiciary is our only hope today. The Constitution that we adopted 75 years ago gave each one of us the right to one vote. This right made us all equal, irrespective of our gender, caste, class, region or religion. The richest man in the country and the poorest have the same power to vote in and vote out a government. This right to vote empowers our poorest citizens, and those most backward who had for centuries been treated as 'untouchables'. It gives a woman the same voice as her father, brother, husband or son. It makes us a representative democracy, of the people, by the people, for the people.

“Sarkar badal denge. (We will change the government)" – this line when spoken by an ordinary citizen during elections, irrespective of which party is in power, is uplifting. Citizens may or may not choose to change the incumbent government, but they can. They can hold their elected representatives to account, they can tell them that they will be thrown out of power if they don’t work for the country. This is what makes us a democracy.

In August 1947, two countries were born, India and Pakistan. We just need to look at where Pakistan is and where we are to know how fortunate we have been that our institutions remained independent, honest and performed the roles assigned to them.

The Indian Army bravely fought wars on the border and stayed far away from politics, the media questioned the government and stood up to it during the Emergency, the ECI took ballot boxes to the farthest corners of the country and fearlessly collected the people’s mandate. There were some irregularities, of course. In every election, there were complaints of some votes being rigged and reports of violence. But the ECI acted on the complaints, held repolls and ensured that we got the government of our choice.

This is under threat today. Our voting right, which is the basis of our democracy, appears to be at risk.

You would know that the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, held a news conference on Thursday afternoon. Like lakhs of fellow citizens, you might have watched his presentation. I will sum it up here.

The Congress party examined the electoral rolls of the Mahadevapura Assembly segment in the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat, which it had lost in 2024. It found:

• 11,965 duplicate voters, who had voted in multiple booths.
• 40,009 fake or invalid addresses, including addresses where the House No. was 0.
• 10,452 bulk voters at single addresses; for example, at one single-bedroom address, 80 voters were listed, who on investigation could not be traced.
• 4,132 names with invalid photographs.
• 33,692 voters enrolled by a misuse of Form 6, the form meant to enlist new voters.

In all, 100,250 voters in Mahadevapura were found to be fake. The BJP had won by 114,046 votes in the Mahadevapura segment. Its victory margin in the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat, of which Mahadevapura is a part, was 32,707 votes.

These findings have come out of an analysis of the ECI’s own data. The analysis took six months because, in this digital age, the commission had inexplicably refused to share the data sought by the opposition in electronic form and had instead handed paper electoral rolls that were not machine readable.

Had the data been given in electronic form, the analysis that took six months could have been done in a matter of seconds, Rahul Gandhi said.

Presenting the findings, he asked that the ECI make available the country’s electoral rolls for the past 10-15 years in electronic form. Only an analysis of the complete electoral rolls would reveal whether the vote theft seen in Mahadevapura was widespread, the leader of the opposition said.

It is a reasonable request. An analysis of the ECI’s own data by the opposition has suggested that the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat was stolen. If this is not true, the commission should show us how. The response should have been immediate because the commission has all the data at its fingertips. We are living in Digital India.

Instead, what the ECI did was to ask Rahul Gandhi to make this statement on oath in an affidavit. How will that help?

If the proof that Rahul Gandhi has presented is not correct, all that the ECI needs to do today is to make the data public and do it in electronic form, so that each one of us voters can also see the truth. It is our right to know the truth.

Going by experience, the ECI will not do this. But you, sir, have the authority to ask it to do so. I request you to exercise this authority.

It was on the Supreme Court’s orders that the ECI had been forced to make public the electoral bonds data, and what that revealed was stunning and frightening.

For some time now, fears have been raised about the integrity of the election process. The ECI has brushed aside doubts about the electronic voting machines, and refused requests to tally the voting machine results with the paper trail.

Why were the paper trail machines bought with taxpayer money? To assure the voters that the machine was recording our vote faithfully. Why then did the commission refuse to tally all the results? Perhaps the fears of malpractice were misplaced, but it is important that the fears be cleared. It might have delayed the announcement of results, but is speed so important? In any case, the elections now are so staggered that people in many parts of the country get the results several weeks after they have voted. We could have waited a few more days.

Last winter, after the Maharashtra Assembly election, a village in the state rose in revolt. Markadwadi was outraged by the election results. The villagers said they had voted for Uttamrao Jankar, but the results showed otherwise. Markadwadi protested, and when the ECI did not come forward to prove with the paper trail slips that there had been no wrongdoing or order a repoll, the villagers decided to hold a mock poll to satisfy themselves. They pooled money and made all arrangements, but the authorities responded by enforcing a curfew and threatening them with police cases. The move was scuttled.

In that same election, the opposition found these troubling facts:

• In the five years between the 2019 Assembly election and the 2024 Lok Sabha election, 32 lakh new voters were added to the rolls in Maharashtra. But in the five months between the Lok Sabha elections in the summer of 2024 and the Assembly elections in November the same year, 39 lakh new voters were added.
• The number of voters in Maharashtra exceeded the total adult population of the state. According to the Government of India’s data, the adult population of Maharashtra was 9.54 crore. But according to the ECI data, 9.7 crore people voted in the state.
• As many as 75 lakh votes were cast after the closing hours of polling, according to the ECI. However, the polling agents did not report long queues after the closing hours.
• The opposition had decisively won the Lok Sabha elections in the state but was swept out in the Assembly elections.

This winter, Bihar will vote in an Assembly election. Out of the blue, at the end of June, the ECI announced an intensive revision of the state’s electoral rolls. That matter is before the Supreme Court and you would be aware of its details. Every day, hardworking journalists are braving the threat of FIRs to bring out the facts. On camera, voters are telling us that the dead in their families appear in the draft rolls. You cannot enter that list without filling a form. Who filled the forms of the dead? There are questions also of the unusually large number of voters recorded as dead in the draft rolls. But since that matter is before the court, we are confident that no fraud will be allowed on the voters of Bihar by way of the SIR.

After the Maharashtra election, the opposition had appealed again and again to the ECI to share with them the centralised voter data in electronic form. The commission did not do so.

But now, in the face of the opposition’s findings on the basis of the paper electoral rolls in one Assembly segment, it is imperative that the ECI share the countrywide data of at least the last elections to the Lok Sabha and the different state Assemblies in electronic form on its website for all of us to see. This is in public interest.

It is well possible that there is no large-scale malpractice, in which case the data will restore our faith in the country’s electoral system and the ECI will emerge stronger.

Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. We live in a country that celebrates Sita’s agnipariksha. The ECI should voluntarily submit itself to scrutiny. But if it does not, sir, I request you to summon the powers the Constitution vests in you, and rise to the responsibility it entrusts in your high office, and order it to do so without delay.

Thanking you,

Yours sincerely,

Harshita Kalyan

A voter

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