In the weeks before the 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections, someone used the Election Commission of India’s own Voter Helpline App to file hundreds of fake voter registration applications in a single constituency – using forged Aadhaar cards, nonexistent addresses, and the stolen data of Mumbai college students. 

A polling official later caught it, rejected the applications, and filed a police complaint alleging the ECI had been “cheated” and that “malpractice” had been attempted.

The FIR filed after the complaint is now nearly 18 months old. No chargesheet has been filed. The last known update, in November 2025, was a police request for IP address data needed to trace who was behind the applications – data the district office didn’t have and passed on to the ECI and the Chief Electoral Officer in Maharashtra. Whether either has responded remains unclear. District officials say they have been sending reminders to the police every three months. The investigation appears to have stalled. 

But the case is ostensibly the first official acknowledgement that the commission’s own digital infrastructure was exploited to attempt electoral fraud ahead of the 2024 Maharashtra polls – polls whose results Congress contested on the grounds of a voter spike the EC dismissed as healthy youth participation.

What happened in Tuljapur

The Voter Helpline App was launched ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and can be used by any citizen above 18 to register as a voter. The EC built in what appeared to be multiple checkpoints: account creation with mobile number verification, OTP authentication at registration, and a second OTP before a Form 6 application is finally submitted. Each application then goes to district officials for review before any voter is added to the rolls.

Between October 2 and October 16, 2024 – a fortnight before polling – around 1,000 applications arrived at the Tehsil Office of Pachora from a single registered account. The mobile numbers, names, and addresses were all suspicious. When booth-level officers did ground checks, none of the applicants existed at the addresses given. Across the Tuljapur assembly constituency, between 4,000 and 5,000 such applications were received in total. All were rejected.

On October 17, Arvind Shankarav, Assistant Electoral Registration Officer at Dharashiv in Osmanabad district, filed a zero FIR at the local police station. His complaint alleged bulk applications to register fake voters using fake Aadhaar cards through the Voter Helpline App. The Election Commission, it said, had been “cheated” and “an attempt has been made to commit malpractice” in the upcoming elections. 

The FIR was registered under several sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, including Section 172 (personation during elections), Section 3(5) (acts committed by multiple people with criminal intent), Sections 318(2) and 336(3) (fraud and forgery), Section 335 (creating false documents), Section 340(2) (using forged documents), Section 336(2) (general forgery, punishable by up to two years in jail), Section 61(2) (criminal conspiracy), and Section 62, which carries a punishment of life imprisonment.

Deputy District Election Officer Shishir Yadav told Newslaundry that the fake applications had also misused the address proofs of Mumbai college students. “Why would a genuine voter use their address proof to submit fraudulent voter applications and get into trouble? So, in that sense, it is pretty obvious that somebody else’s data has also been misused.”

The four mobile numbers listed in the FIR were unreachable when Newslaundry called them.

The Voter Helpline App is one of 15 applications the EC has rolled out for voters and election officials. The most recent, ECINET – launched by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar as a one-stop digital platform for all election services – ran into trouble within a month, with voters in West Bengal claiming they could not check their electoral status because the app wasn't functioning. The BLO App, designed for booth-level officers to conduct house-to-house verification, had its Android version updated over 30 times during the Special Intensive Revision; BLOs in Chennai complained their phones froze repeatedly, causing data loss.

The app’s problem in Tuljapur was of a different order – not a glitch but a design gap. It processed hundreds of fraudulent applications from a single account before anyone raised an alert. The OTP checkpoints, the account verification, the Form 6 process – none of it prevented attempted bulk abuse.

The investigation that isn’t moving

The case was transferred to Tuljapur police station. Since then, Yadav said, his office has been sending reminders every three months. “It is important to find out who was behind the mass applications because it is concerning,” he said.

In November 2025, the Superintendent of Police sent a confidential letter to the district election officials requesting the IP addresses of the bulk applications – the basic technical thread needed to trace their origin. The district didn’t have them and forwarded the request to the ECI and the Chief Electoral Officer in Maharashtra.

“The last update was in November 2025. The Superintendent of Police had sent us a confidential letter requesting IP addresses of these bulk applications and other technical details required to conduct the investigation. We did not have it at Tehsil level. So, we had forwarded it to the Election Commission of India and Chief Electoral Officer in Maharashtra. We don’t know if they have furnished the required information,” Yadav said.

Investigating officer Nilesh Deshmukh confirmed only that the case remains open. “We are still investigating the matter. So, we cannot share any information with the media at the moment.” When asked whether the ECI and CEO Maharashtra were cooperating with the investigation, he disconnected the call.

Newslaundry has sent detailed questionnaires to both offices. This story will be updated when they respond.

The wider picture

Five days after the Maharashtra results were declared, Congress alleged that 40 lakh new voters had been registered in the state in just five months – more than the total added over the previous five years. The EC dismissed this as evidence of healthy youth participation. 

The Dharashiv FIR is a piece of official record that could give the concern a concrete basis.

The constituency at the centre of the case, Tuljapur, sits in the Marathwada region, where the economy runs on agriculture and parties from the centre-left have historically dominated. Between 1957 and 2014, Congress won 10 of 13 elections here; the remaining three went to the Peasants and Workers Party. The BJP contested the seat for the first time in 1980, got 1.86 percent of the vote, and then stopped contesting. It won for the first time in 2019, with 24 percent – up from 16 percent in 2014. In 2024, BJP's Ranajagjitsinha Padmasinha Patil defeated Congress’ Kuldip Dheeraj Patil by 36,879 votes.

Newslaundry has previously reported that in the six months before the elections, the voter count in Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ Nagpur South West constituency rose by 8.25 percent – double the 4 percent benchmark set by the commission.

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