By Vinaya Deshpande Pandit

Copyright thehindu

The Rajura Assembly constituency in Maharashtra is in the eye of the storm yet again. After Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi’s press conference on Thursday (September 18, 2025), where he highlighted alleged “voter fraud” in Rajura and Karnataka’s Aland, the phone lines of Congress leader Subhash Dhote’s office have been ringing non-stop.

Mr. Dhote, who lost to the BJP’s Devrao Bhongle in the Assembly election by a margin of 3,050 votes in the constituency in Chandrapur district, told The Hindu that he has been speaking about the issue since last year. He says there were attempts to add nearly 18,000 bogus names to the voters’ list in the Assembly seat between the Lok Sabha election in April-May 2024 and the Assembly election in November. While an attempt to enrol nearly 6,800 bogus votes was thwarted after the Congress’s intervention, there are concerns over addition of 11,036 names in the period, he said.

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However, the office of the Sub-Divisional Officer, also the Electoral Registration Officer of Rajura, denied there was any wrongful addition of voters, and in fact said “suo motu timely action by the administration prevented bogus voter registration” in the constituency”.

“The Electoral Registration Officer, Rajura, Chandrapur, has clarified that due to the prompt due diligence and action taken by the administration, attempts of bogus voter registration in the 70–Rajura Assembly Constituency were successfully prevented. During the period 1st to 17th October, 2024, a total of 7,592 applications for new voter registration were received. On detailed verification conducted through Booth Level Officers, serious discrepancies were observed. Of these, 6,861 applications were found invalid due to reasons such as applicants not residing at the given address, applicants being non-existent, or absence of proper photographs and supporting documents. Accordingly, these applications were rejected in due course, and no entry was made in the electoral roll,” a statement released on Thursday (September 18, 2025) said.

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“Taking serious note of the matter, the District Election Officer instructed the Electoral Registration Officer and Sub-Divisional Officer, Rajura, to conduct a thorough inquiry into all applications and to initiate necessary criminal proceedings under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Information Technology Act, 2000. Consequently, Crime No. 629/2024 has been registered at Rajura Police Station, and further investigation is being carried out by the Police Department,” it added.

On allegations that 11,036 names were added to the voters’ list between the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, the District Information Officer told The Hindu: “It was a natural increase in the summary revision.”

Rajura SDO Ravindra Mane, who spoke to The Hindu, also made a similar assertion. “Earlier, there was only one qualifying date to make additions. Now, there are four – January 1, April 1, July 1, and October 1. Thus, additions to the voters’ list happens regularly. There is a natural summary revision. The 11,064 additional names in the voters’ list are valid. The Congress leader has claimed the names are bogus and wants us to investigate it. But we have communicated to him that these are valid votes. As for the other 6,853 names are concerned, they had been bogus. A complaint has already been registered. Mr. Dhote wrote to us in August this year. We have responded with the above details,” he said.

Congress’s claims

However, Mr. Dhote said the police had not made any headway in the investigation so far. “There is an addition of over 18,000 bogus voters. After the Lok Sabha election, as we started preparing for the Assembly election, party workers started coming to me with complaints that 500-600 bogus votes were being added on a daily basis. The voters were Telugu-speaking, not from here. So we raised the issue after October 17, 2024. Thereafter, over 6,000 bogus names were removed. An FIR was registered. But what we did not realise was that over 11,000 bogus voters were also added before October 17. Why was no action taken against them? I lost by a margin of just over 3,000 votes,” he said.