Maharashtra: Ex-CM Chavan alleges 56,000 duplicate voter entries, seeks roll clean-up

Former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan has alleged that over 56,000 duplicate voter entries exist across six Assembly constituencies in the Satara region, including his own Karad South seat. He has urged the Election Commission to clean the electoral rolls during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) drive.

Speaking to The Hindu on Monday, Mr. Chavan said an analysis of voters' lists in his constituency and five neighbouring seats found 56,118 duplicate entries. In Karad South alone, he claimed 21,132 electors were registered 48,741 times, with some names appearing up to 15 times.

“Take the example of Rani Kate from Karad. She is 29 years old and has been enumerated twice in the same constituency, with different EPIC numbers. Even Adke Sakshi Ashok, age 18, appears twice in the list, with all other details being the same except the EPIC numbers. The name ‘Patil Sachin Shivaji’ appears 15 times, while ‘Patil Sanjay Shankar’ appears 14 times,” Mr. Chavan said.

The former Union Minister also questioned the logic behind such repetitions. “How many Narendra Damodardas Modi will you find in the same constituency? Then how come people with the same name, the same father’s name and the same surname appear in such large numbers?” he asked.

Mr. Chavan, who lost the 2024 Assembly election from Karad South, said he had filed an election petition in the Bombay High Court challenging the result. He said he decided to conduct this analysis after the Election Commission of India (ECI) stopped providing machine-readable voters' lists. “It only gives the voters’ list in PDF format. We painstakingly converted the entire data into Excel sheets and thereafter analysed voters,” he explained.

The Congress leader also pointed to a newspaper report quoting Union Home Minister Amit Shah, in which Mr. Shah allegedly instructed party workers to increase votes by 10% at every booth. This was said to be during the period between the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and the Maharashtra Assembly polls that followed.

“The average annual growth rate of voters in India is 0.9%. Between the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections, there was a period of five months. The average natural growth rate should have been 0.4%,” Mr. Chavan said, alleging that the larger increase was the result of a strategy to register voters twice.

He submitted his findings to the District Collector, requesting that the electoral roll be cleaned during the SIR. “I have submitted all this data, requesting that the electoral roll be cleaned during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision at the very least,” he said.

The Election Commission has not yet issued a formal response to the allegations. Mr. Chavan's petition is pending before the Bombay High Court.