Crisis of CEC credibility deepening

The crisis of credibility of the Central Election Commission has furthered deepened with  fresh charges of manipulation levelled by Leader of  Opposition Rahul Gandhi on Thursday regarding deletion of names of 6,018 voters from the voters’ list in Aland Assembly constituency in Karnataka prior to the April 2023 elections. The charges reinforce the doubt that the entire system is liable to manipulation as votes have been deleted in response to request filed from a neighbouring state and the Election Commission of India (ECI) has failed to provide the Destination IP Addresses as recorded in the servers of the polls body, to the Karnataka Police and the CID who took up the probe in response to the candidate’s complaint.

That Congress candidate from the Constituency Mr. B. R. Patil emerged victorious in the election from the constituency is totally extraneous to the case and the issue and it should neither lessen the severity of the charges nor should deflect  attention from the opacity of the process involved in the ECI taking up the probe. The complaint pertaining to the voters’ list fraud involving deletion of over 6,000 voters had been lodged prior to the election and the Karnataka CID had taken up the probe. But 18 letters from the CID requesting the ECI to provide the ‘Destination IP addresses’ as well as ‘Device Destination Ports’ failing to elicit any response, have led to the latest allegation pertaining to the fraud. It is this act that has led Mr Gandhi to accuse the CEC of protecting the fraudsters and blocking the investigations. 

The fact that as-yet unidentified entity made use of automated software to tamper with the electoral rolls makes it quite evident that the entire system is vulnerable to manipulation and it did impact the electoral machinery—and perhaps the outcome—during the last few elections. With Rahul Gandhi having come up with ample evidence with regard to Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha constituency and now the Aland assembly elections in 2023, the ECI would need to come clean on its role instead of hiding behind chicanery.