The Election Commission of India has firmly responded to Congress MP Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of large-scale voter fraud in the Haryana Assembly elections, questioning the accuracy of his claims. According to ANI, sources within the Commission said that no appeals were filed against the electoral rolls and only 22 election petitions were pending in the High Court for Haryana’s 90 assembly seats.

The Commission asked why Congress's polling agents did not raise objections at polling stations if they suspected duplicate voters. It also questioned whether Gandhi supports or opposes the SIR process, known as the Systematic Information Revision, which removes duplicate, deceased, or shifted voters while verifying citizenship.

The Commission further pointed out that Congress Booth Level Agents did not file any claims or appeals during the voter roll revision, which could have helped prevent duplicate entries.

It added that Gandhi’s claim that duplicate votes benefited the BJP was contradicted by official records, which showed that many of those votes went to the Congress itself. The Commission clarified that “House Number Zero” referred to areas without officially assigned house numbers and questioned why no appeals were made during Bihar’s SIR process held from 1 August to 15 October.

The Chief Electoral Officer of Haryana shared more details about the process, saying the draft electoral rolls for the 2024 Assembly elections were published and shared with recognised political parties on 2 August 2024. During the Summary Revision, 4,16,408 claims and objections were received. Haryana had 20,629 Booth Level Officers, and the final electoral rolls were released on 27 August 2024 with no appeals filed against them.

The final rolls were given to contesting candidates on 16 September 2024, after the last date of withdrawal. Elections were held across 20,632 polling stations with 1,031 candidates. A total of 86,790 polling agents and 10,180 counting agents participated. Only five complaints were received during counting, and the results were announced on 8 October 2024, with 23 petitions filed later to challenge the outcome.

Earlier, Rahul Gandhi had claimed that one in eight voters in Haryana were fake, alleging that 25 lakh votes were manipulated. At a press conference called ‘The H Files’, he said, “We have crystal clear proof that 25 lakh voters are fake, that they either don’t exist or they are duplicates or designed in a way for anybody to vote. We suspected this was happening not just in individual constituencies, but at the state and national levels.”

Gandhi also said that several Congress candidates complained that their expected results were unexpectedly reversed, citing similar experiences in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Maharashtra.

As Gandhi’s allegations triggered a political storm ahead of the Bihar elections, the Election Commission and the Haryana Chief Electoral Officer presented detailed election data that contradicted his claims.