Simply Haryana: State hogs global limelight amid 'vote chori' controversy

A day before the high-stakes Bihar poll on November 6, Haryana hogged international limelight for all the wrong reasons. Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha (LoP) Rahul Gandhi alleged large-scale "vote chori" (vote theft) in the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections. He accused the Election Commission (EC) of adding 25 lakh fake and duplicate voters to the electoral rolls which, he alleged, enabled the BJP to "steal" the election and form the government for the third time in a row.

The vote fraud allegations, coming exactly 13 months after the Assembly elections, set off a war of words between the Opposition, especially the Congress, and the BJP, with the saffron party terming the charges politically motivated and baseless and “borne out of frustration”.

It advised Rahul to put the ‘Congress house in order’. The EC, too, tried to come clean arguing that the Congress’ block level agents never raised these issues when draft and final electoral rolls were shared with them in the run-up to elections.

On the face of it, the allegations were unprecedented in India’s electoral history with the finger being pointed at every eighth voter (Haryana has approximately 2 crore voters).

The Haryana Chief Electoral Officer, however, tried to put the record straight claiming that a total of 4,16,408 claims and objections were received during summary revision. However, there were hardly any objections when the final electoral rolls were shared with the parties and on the next day of the polling (on October 6, 2024).

What added a glamorous touch to Congress leader’s vote fraud allegations was the mention of a Brazilian hairdresser, Larissa Nery, whose photo, he alleged, was used 22 times under different names in the Rai Assembly segment of Sonepat district. She allegedly voted at 10 different booths in the Rai segment, the home constituency of BJP’s state chief Mohan Lal Badoli.

After its leader’s allegations, the Congress was quick to announce a statewide agitation under its ‘vote chor, gaddi chod’ campaign. Not to left behind, the BJP asked its senior leaders and cadre to counter the ‘misleading campaign’ of the Congress at the grassroots level.

In the backdrop of anti-incumbency against the BJP, the Congress was considered to be favourite in the Assembly elections. A majority of the exit polls and political observers predicted an outright Congress win. However, as the D-day came, the BJP surprised everyone by scripting the first-ever electoral hat-trick in the state’s electoral history, upsetting the Congress' calculations.

It was claimed that a faction-ridden Congress was no match for the battle-ready BJP in the polls. Meanwhile, micro-management by BJP top strategist and Home Minister Amit Shah and over-confidence of former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda were given as other reasons for the BJP’s surprise win and the Congress’ shock defeat.

While the Congress and the BJP engaged in the war of words, the LoP’s allegations have raised a pertinent issue of alleged irregularities in the electoral rolls in world’s largest democracy. The allegations may not have any bearing on the 2024 Assembly poll results, yet it has brought long-pending electoral reforms, especially error-free electoral rolls, in the focus again.