Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has raised serious concerns over the integrity of voter rolls in Haryana, claiming that electoral-list anomalies in the 2024 Assembly elections point to a systemic failure. At a press conference, Gandhi highlighted an instance in Dhakola village (Rai assembly constituency) where a single woman’s photograph appears 223 times across two booths. He insisted the Election Commission of India (EC) must explain how the entries emerged.
Gandhi further alleged that up to 25 lakh fictitious voters may have been registered in the state-equivalent to about 12.5 % of the electorate-asserting this figure could distort election outcomes. The EC responded the next day, stating that the “House No. 0” notation and placeholders are routinely used for unnumbered residences, and asked why Congress had not raised formal objections during the revision process.
An independent inspection by NDTV in Rai found that certain voters reported valid identity cards, but names were missing from the revised rolls; a Booth-Level Officer (BLO) confirmed that previously flagged photograph duplications were traced back to multi-use of a stock image rather than deliberate impersonation.
Political analysts say that while the allegations underscore urgent issues of roll-accuracy and verification, the evidence presented remains under scrutiny and does not yet constitute legal proof of fraud. The EC maintains that automatic checks for duplicate entries and removals of ineligible votes are in place, and any large-scale manipulation would be detected by the system.
With Haryana’s electoral roll revision now a contentious topic, calls for a transparent audit of the entire voter-list process are growing louder-raising questions about confidence in the democratic process in key states ahead of the 2025-26 election season.
