'Vote theft' in more than 27 seats in 2023 MP assembly elections, alleges Congress

Bhopal, Aug 19 (PTI) Congress leader Umang Singhar on Tuesday alleged "votes were stolen" in more than 27 seats in the 2023 Madhya Pradesh assembly elections and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was given "unethical benefit".

Talking to reporters here, the Leader of Opposition in the assembly also claimed, through data-based graphics and figures, that lakhs of voters were added a few months before the elections and in segments where Congress candidates lost by a narrow margin, the elector increase was found to be much higher than the gap of defeat.

"Vote theft took place in more than 27 assembly seats in the state and this was done to give unethical benefit to the BJP," he insisted.

Madhya Pradesh has 230 assembly seats.

Singhar claimed that in seven months between January 5 and August 2, 2023, the total number of voters in Madhya Pradesh increased by about 4.64 lakh, while in just two months between August 2 and October 4, there was an unexpected rise of 16.05 lakh electors.

"This means 26,000 voters were added every day (between August 2-October 4)," the Opposition MLA said.

Polling in the state took place on November 17, 2023.

The Leader of Opposition stated, "The revelations of vote theft by (Congress MP) Rahul Gandhi have shaken the country. Madhya Pradesh is also a big victim of this well-planned electoral conspiracy." He alleged there were large-scale irregularities in the voter list, including abnormal increase in the number of electors voters, and duplicate entries.

Singhar said the Madhya Pradesh State Election Commission had issued an order on December 2, 2022, directing the removal of 8,51,564 fake/duplicate entries in the voter list but no district officer made the deletion report public.

He claimed the relevant data was not made available even through the Right to Information route.

The Congress MLA demanded that the Election Commission freeze the final voter list, get signatures of all political parties on the published roll and avoid any changes till the completion of elections.

Singhar asked the EC to release complete data on voters in 'machine-readable format' and provide CVS (file format) instead of PDF images so that independent scrutiny of the list can be done.

In the 2023 assembly polls, the BJP bagged 163 seats, while the Congress managed to win just 66. PTI MAS RSY