ANNOUNCING THAT the Lok Sabha elections had created a “world record” with over 64 crore voters, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Monday responded for the first time to allegations of “faulty” electoral rolls, and questions over EVMs, the turnout and the counting process, saying the poll panel was prepared to counter various challenges this time but it “failed to understand” a “pattern” of “mischievous narratives”.
Addressing the Election Commission’s first press conference after the polls were announced in March, Kumar said, “There is pattern, there is a design, I’m not saying it’s a toolkit. But there is a pattern, there is a design. Let us understand this.”
With just a day to go for the counting of votes, he said the EC had been prepared to combat “4 Ms” — muscle, money, misinformation and MCC violations — but there was a “fifth M, mischievous narratives, which we failed to understand”.
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“There was a pattern… First, a case was brought before the elections started that the voter list is faulty. The country should see the pattern… The case went on for 15 days. We prepared an extensive affidavit and later it turned out everything was fine… Then the EVM case came when elections started. This could have spread anarchy in the country… The case and our reply had been pending since 2023. But it came up now, just four days before the first phase. In 2019, too, there was a similar case,” he said.
After the cases on the EVM and voter turnout data were heard by the Supreme Court, it was alleged that counting agents of parties would not be allowed to witness counting at the ARO’s table, which was denied by the EC. Then, he said, referring to Congress leader Jairam Ramesh’s statement, it was alleged 150 DMs were being intimidated.
“What is this happening in the country? This is a fake narrative that is prevalent in the country and we failed to understand this. We admit this. Now, we have understood this,” Kumar said.
Asked whether there were any learnings from the election process, he said that in hindsight, given the heatwave, the polls should have been finished a month ago. Additionally, he said that the EC has to be better prepared to counter “false narratives”.
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Kumar said that a total of 64.2 crore voters had cast their votes in the 2024 elections, with the final figure to be released after Monday’s repolls in some areas in the seventh phase were over. “We have created a world record of 642 million proud Indian voters… It’s the highest ever number of voters in any electoral exercise in the world. It is 1.5 times the voters of all G7 countries,” he said.
Of the total number of voters, women accounted for 31.2 crore voters. A total of 1.5 crore polling and security personnel were involved in holding the elections. Kumar said the number of re-polls had been much less this time compared to 2019, when there were 540. This time, there were 39 repolls, of which 25 were in Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur.
There had been no major incidents of violence, the CEC said. He added that seizures of freebies, cash, liquor, etc., had reached Rs 10,000 crore this time, up from Rs 3,475 crore in 2019. A total of Rs 1,054 crore in cash, liquor worth Rs 898 crore, precious metals worth Rs 1,459 crore, freebies worth Rs 2,198 crore and drugs worth Rs 4,391 crore had been seized by law enforcement agencies.
On the Model Code of Conduct violations, the EC had disposed of 90 per cent of the 495 major complaints, he said. Of the 4.56 lakh complaints received through the cVigil app, 99.9 per cent had been disposed of, he said.
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“In a lighter vein, on social media you will see various memes with taglines, like ‘laapata gentlemen are back’,” he said, in a reference to criticism on social media that drew parallels with the movie ‘Laapata Ladies’.
“We were never out. We were always here. We chose to interact with you through our press notes. This was the first time that we have issued close to a 100 press notes. We have been interacting from behind the scene,” Kumar said.
Encouraged by the turnout in Jammu and Kashmir, he said the EC would “very soon” start the process of holding Assembly elections there.
The press conference was held a day after a delegation of the Opposition INDIA bloc met the Commission to demand that postal ballots be counted before EVM votes.
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Till the 2019 elections, counting of postal ballots was completed before the finalising of EVM counting. The EC changed its directions regarding counting of postal ballots in May 2019. While postal ballot counting is supposed to start 30 minutes before EVM, it does not have to be concluded before EVM counting.
A BJP delegation also met the EC on Sunday, alleging that there was an attempt by Opposition parties led by the Congress to undermine the integrity of the elections.
The CEC said the postal ballot counting process cannot be changed midway. He added that in a majority of polling booths, counting of postal ballots typically finishes before the EVM votes are counted.
