Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu made similar statements about the Election Commission of India (ECI) manipulating voters before he joined forces with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These claims are similar to those made recently by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. Naidu is presently a prominent partner in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which is led by the BJP. He is the head of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP).
Naidu said in March 2019, when his TDP was in charge in Andhra Pradesh, that the names of as many as eight lakh TDP voters had been taken off the election records. He said that the YSR Congress party, which is in the opposition, was utilizing Form-7 applications to help with this. Form-7 is a form that is only used to delete names. Naidu said on X (then Twitter), “Eight lakh TDP votes have been removed…” It seems like they might take away my vote tomorrow.
State Chief Electoral Officer Gopala Krishna Dwivedi said at the time that the ECI had only allowed the removal of 40,000 votes from 74 assembly constituencies and that only 10,000 had been removed so far.
A Pattern of Claims
The accusations made by Naidu in 2019 were not the only ones. In December 2023, even though his party was in the opposition, he filed a letter to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Andhra Pradesh, saying that there were problems with the voters’ list and criticizing the YSRCP administration, which was in power at the time.
In 2004, when he was Chief Minister, Naidu also criticized the ECI, saying that the commission was “more responsive to unfounded complaints of opposition parties” about election records.
The TDP is currently the second-largest ally in the NDA. They have lately questioned the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, which is likely to be used across the country. The party sent a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar saying that the exercise should not happen “within six months” of a major election. They also said that its purpose should be clearly stated and limited to “electoral roll recorrection and inclusion,” not citizenship verification.
What Rahul Gandhi said recently and how the ECI responded
This historical background sets the stage for Rahul Gandhi’s new claims on September 18. Gandhi said that CEC Gyanesh Kumar was “protecting” people who were “destroying democracy” by not giving technical details about suspected attempts to remove votes from Karnataka’s Aland constituency. He also gave an example from Maharashtra, saying that voters were added fraudulently.
The ECI quickly responded to Gandhi’s assertions with five points, which were branded as #ECIFactCheck. The poll panel refuted his claims, saying that the public cannot withdraw votes online and that applications like this go through a strict process. The ECI did say, meanwhile, that they had made “unsuccessful attempts” to erase voters in Aland in 2023 and that an ECI authority had filed a FIR to look into the matter. The ECI’s answer said, “In 2023, there were some failed attempts to delete voters in the Aland Assembly Constituency, and the ECI itself filed a FIR to look into the matter.”