Since last year, Newslaundry has been tracking lists of voters – how many are added, how many are removed, and whether all these processes make sense. 

After our series from Delhi and Uttar Pradesh and our investigation into mysterious additions in Devendra Fadnavis’s constituency, we turned our gaze to another constituency in Maharashtra – this one won by Chandrashekhar Bawankule, the president of the state BJP.

The constituency in question is Kamthi, located in Nagpur and in the spotlight after Rahul Gandhi flagged it as an example of potential foul play. He claimed about 35,000 new voters had been added in a five-month period, and that the BJP’s margin of victory in the assembly polls last year “is nearly equal to the number of new voters added”. 

It should be noted that BJP’s Bawankule won by a margin of 40,946 votes. 

Now, between the Lok Sabha polls and the state assembly polls last year, Kamthi saw the addition of at least 33,295 voters. This was a seven percent spike in the electorate, which is significantly higher than the four percent rise that the Election Commission sees as a warning mark.

Importantly, this was also the steepest rise in voters in Kamthi between two elections in 20 years. 

Even more startlingly, 14 booths in Kamthi recorded an increase in voters of over 30 percent. One booth even recorded an increase of over 100 percent – the number of new voters added exceeded the number of existing voters. 

Rahul Gandhi had pointed out that the Congress’s votes remained constant in Kamthi, while the BJP alliance’s votes increased from 1.18 lakh to 1.74 lakh. But the Election Commission had rejected his claims: it said the Congress candidate Suresh Bhoyar hasn’t filed a petition in the high court challenging the results, and that Bhoyar’s vote count has also increased compared to 2019. 

Until 1999, Kamthi used to be a Congress bastion. It then changed hands until the 2024 Lok Sabha polls when the Congress defeated the Shiv Sena, a BJP ally, by over 17,000 votes. In the assembly election five months later, the BJP won and also gained 55,219 votes more than it did in the 2019 assembly polls. 

Crucially, when we scrutinised the booth-wise vote share across Kamthi’s 524 booths, we found the BJP won most of the booths where a large number of new voters were added. 

Newslaundry’s analysis is based on voter rolls and turnout figures scrunched from the EC website. It is beyond the scope of this piece to ascertain how many of the new voters exercised their right to franchise as that data is not in the public domain.

Booths below 4% additions

In 286 booths, where the rate of addition was less than four percent, the BJP won 203 booths. The BJP’s vote share in these booths stood at 52 percent while the Congress clocked 42 percent.

The BJP received an average of 314 votes per booth while Congress got 254 votes. 

In booths with higher additions, the BJP’s margin increased. Of the 524 booths in the assembly, 238 booths saw additions ranging from four percent to 108 percent. In these 238 booths, the BJP clocked 56 percent of votes polled, winning in 194 of them. The Congress polled 40 percent of the votes, winning in 44 booths.

 Booths with 4-10% additions

There were 142 booths with the rate of addition ranging from four to 10 percent. The BJP won 100 of these, polling 50.5 percent of total votes. The Congress, on the other hand, polled 46 percent of votes but could only win 42 of these booths.

These booths made up for 27 percent of total votes in the assembly.

Booths above 10%

In 96 booths, the rate of addition ranged from 10 percent to 108 percent. 

The BJP won 94 of these booths, clocking 63 percent of the votes. The Congress won only two and got 32 percent of the votes in these booths. The BJP secured 23 percent of its total votes – 40,964 votes – from these 96 booths.

The BJP got an average of more than 400 votes whereas the Congress received just about 210 votes in these booths. This is significantly higher than the difference in average vote share (60 votes) in booths which saw rates of addition below 4 percent.

The votes in these 96 booths made up for 21 percent of the total votes in the assembly. 

Booth 335, or the ZP Primary School room in Marodi, had the highest number of additions – 526 names or 108 percent – taking the total electorate to 1,009. The booth had a voter turnout of 79 percent – way higher than the voter turnout of the assembly 53 percent. Here, the BJP got 508 votes while the Congress received 258 votes. 

Interestingly, there is one booth – Kabira Convent in Besa – with over 1,100 voters but zero voter turnout. Newslaundry reached out to the BLO of this booth but did not receive a response.

Unprecedented spike in voters

Newslaundry reached out to over a dozen booth level officers in the constituency where the increase in voters was over 20 percent. Three replied to our calls. 

At booth 260, or room number 1 at ZP Higher Primary School in Bidgaon, where 381 new voters were added, BLO Priti told us that she had not filled form 6 for the addition of these voters. 

“Ahead of 2024 assembly elections, a political party was organising camps to register new voters. When we were given these forms for ground verification, I could not trace these voters. Still they were registered as voters. Why? The district office will answer that,” she claimed. Asked which political party was organising these camps, she said she could not recall the name. 

At this booth, the BJP defeated Congress by over 200 votes. 

Ravindra Sahare, who is a BLO at booth 376, or Sanjuba High School in Gonhism, for over a decade, claimed that he had not filled forms to add the 200 voters that were included on his booth. “A political party and its workers were involved in filling forms 6. But we could not trace these voters in ground verification.” 

BJP swept this booth with over 170 votes. 

Chaya Chaudhary, BLO at booth 261, or room number 2 of ZP Higher Primary School in Bidgaon, claimed that she had not filled forms of 241 new voters registered at her booth. Asked if she was able to trace them during ground verification, she claimed that she had “no idea about it” before disconnecting our call. 

Newslaundry has reached out to the ERO, DEO and the Maharashtra CEO seeking their comment. This report will be updated if they respond. 

Graphics by Gobindh VB

Stories like these take time and resources, both of which can be in short supply in a small team. But we do them because they’re important to the public, and because our subscribers have our backs.

You can be one too. Click here to join the tribe.