EC says 2024 vote gap is non-voters, not uncounted ballots

The Election Commission of India has dismissed the claim that lakhs of votes went uncounted in the 2024 Lok Sabha and Maharashtra Assembly elections. Social media posts and some reports had pointed to a wide gap between the votes polled and the votes counted. The Commission says the claim comes from a misreading of election data.

According to the Commission, the gap people have noticed is the difference between the number of registered voters and the number of votes counted. That difference, it said, is made up of electors who did not turn up to vote. It does not stand for ballots that were left out of the tally. The Commission called it wrong to describe the gap between enrolled voters and those who voted as uncounted votes.

To make the point, it released figures for the Mumbai North Lok Sabha seat and for the Dahanu and Beed Assembly seats.

Mumbai North had 18,12,115 registered voters, of whom 10,36,496 voted. These included 10,33,268 EVM votes and 3,228 postal ballots. Turnout was 57.20 per cent. The count recorded 10,35,731 votes. For the remaining 765, the Commission said they were votes cast during testing and similar votes held in the control unit. Under its guidelines, these are not added to the count. In all, 7,75,619 voters on this seat, about 7.75 lakh, did not vote.

Dahanu had 3,01,257 registered voters, and 2,21,818 of them voted. That figure includes 2,20,919 EVM votes and 899 postal ballots. Turnout was 73.63 per cent, and 79,439 voters stayed away.

Beed had 3,84,885 registered voters. Of these, 2,42,983 voted, made up of 2,38,845 EVM votes and 4,138 postal ballots. Turnout was 63.13 per cent, and 1,41,902 voters did not vote.

The Commission also explained how voting and counting are recorded. The official record of polling at each booth is Form 17C, which is a legal document. When polling ends, the presiding officer of the booth fills in Part I of the form and hands a copy to the polling agents of the candidates present at the booth.

On counting day, each candidate's counting agents check the figures in Part I of Form 17C against the entries in Part II, which records the votes actually counted. This lets the agents verify that the two sets of numbers tally.

The Commission added that full details of total voters, EVM votes and postal ballots are public. They are available in the statistical reports and index cards on its official website.