Election Commission rejects Opposition report alleging vote-count mismatch in 51 seats

The Opposition had submitted a report to the Election Commission of India claiming that figures for votes cast and votes counted differed in 51 seats in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir. The Commission has now responded and rejected all the claims. It also denied the claim that voters were stopped at these polling stations or that fake votes were cast.

Since the 2024 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, the INDIA bloc has been repeatedly questioning the election process. What began with EVMs has now extended to the electoral rolls and the SIR process.

The report cited the example of Mumbai North, where the BJP's Piyush Goyal defeated the Congress's Bhushan Patil. It claimed that, according to records, 18.11 lakh votes were cast, while the declared result showed 10.33 lakh votes. That meant 7.78 lakh votes were not counted in the EVMs at all, it claimed.

In Haryana's Kaithal seat, the Congress's Aditya Surjewala defeated the BJP's Leela Ram by 8,124 votes. The claim was that, according to an internal register, only 215 people voted in the entire seat, yet 1,67,285 votes were counted on the EVMs. A similar dispute was raised over the Srinagar Lok Sabha seat, won by the National Conference's Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi. A total of 6,72,942 votes were said to have been counted there, while 6,66,046 votes were counted on the EVMs, a difference of 6,896 votes. It was also claimed that four more seats in Maharashtra and Haryana showed large differences between polling and counting figures. It was further said that despite such a large irregularity in 51 seats, the Commission did not order repolls.

The office of the Chief Electoral Officer, Maharashtra (@CEO_Maharashtra), said on November 11, 2026, in a post marked #FACTCHECK, that the actual figures of votes cast on polling day are given in Form 17 to the polling agents of candidates. These figures are matched with the EVM figures at the time of counting.

The Election Commission of India gave a 66-page reply rejecting the allegations related to the 2024 elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir. It sets out details of the election records. The Congress had demanded repolls in 20 seats in Haryana, and in response the Commission had submitted a 1,600-page report. The Commission says it contains complete information. According to the Commission's reply, the election process there was transparent and accurate.

The Opposition has turned aggressive again over a change concerning the Commission. In May 2024, the Election Commission told the Supreme Court that making election process records public could lead to misuse. The High Court had meanwhile ordered the Commission to provide the records and footage. At that time, on December 20, the Union government amended the Conduct of Election Rules and barred the public release of these records and footage.