NEW DELHI: Tamil Nadu chief minister and DMK president MK Stalin on Monday joined the chorus against the Election Commission of India (ECI) over concerns of voter deletions and irregularities in electoral roll preparation. He said the press conference held by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Sunday “raised more questions than it answered” regarding issues highlighted by the opposition INDIA bloc.Posting on X, Stalin wrote, “The interview by the #CEC is raising more questions than providing answers to the issues highlighted by the #INDIA bloc.” He highlighted seven key concerns:
- Voter deletions: “How can there be so many deletions of eligible voters when house-to-house enumeration was undertaken?”
- Low new voter enrolment: “The enrolment of new voters is abnormally low. Were young voters turning 18 on the qualifying date properly enumerated? Has any database been compiled to track this?”
- Procedural issues: “Procedures under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960—including enquiry and two appeals—may exclude many voters in the forthcoming
Bihar elections . Will the ECI address this?” - SIR challenges: “Will the ECI consider these practical difficulties while conducting Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in other states?”
- Deletion of deceased voters: “A request submitted on 17 July 2025 by the DMK to delete the names of deceased voters under the 1 May 2025 notification has not yet been implemented.”
- Aadhaar as proof: “Why isn’t Aadhaar accepted as one of the documents to validate a voter’s claim?”
- Transparency and voter-friendliness: “If fair elections are truly the aim of the ECI, why can’t it be more transparent and voter-friendly?”
Earlier in the day, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah said the ECI failed to address concerns of “electoral manipulation” raised by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, which he claimed only strengthens suspicions about the poll body’s conduct.In a post on X, Siddaramaiah said, “The Election Commission of India (ECI) finally spoke, not out of duty, but because the Congress, the INDIA Alliance, the civil society, and even the Supreme Court forced it to. And when it did, the mask slipped.”He added that the ECI’s press conference “was shrouded in arrogance,” accusing the poll body of appearing to read from the BJP’s script rather than acting as an impartial referee. “Yesterday’s press conference didn’t answer questions raised by LoP Shri @RahulGandhi—it only confirmed suspicions,” he said.Siddaramaiah highlighted discrepancies identified by Rahul Gandhi in Bengaluru Central, using the ECI’s own data. “From that one example, it is obvious that such anomalies exist in many other constituencies too. Instead of answering, the ECI tried to threaten the Opposition,” he said.The CM criticized the ECI’s insistence on affidavits and oaths for validating electoral data, calling it “absurd,” and said the commission’s dismissal of concerns about fake and duplicate voters was “nothing but an excuse to escape responsibility.”“The truth is, it took time for @INCIndia to expose these irregularities because the ECI itself made the data inaccessible. We had to dig through thousands of pages in just one assembly segment of Bengaluru Central to uncover the mismatches. If this is the situation in one seat, imagine the scale across the country,” he added.Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, meanwhile, refuted all allegations of “vote theft” made by Rahul Gandhi in a press conference on Sunday in New Delhi. He called claims of bias an “insult” to the Constitution and asked Gandhi to either submit a signed affidavit or apologise to the nation within seven days, stating that no third option existed.Siddaramaiah concluded that no press conference or “grand speech” would cover up the truth and urged the ECI to protect the interests of citizens.
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