A PIL in the Supreme Court seeks an SIT probe into electoral roll fraud, highlighting Rahul Gandhi’s claims. The plea asserts that the “dilution of purity undermines free and fair elections,” raising significant concerns about electoral integrity within the community.
New Delhi: A public interest litigation (PIL) submitted to the Supreme Court, calling for a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the allegations made by Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi regarding extensive electoral roll manipulation in Bengaluru Central and other areas.
The petition also requests the Court to instruct the Election Commission of India (ECI) to develop and issue binding guidelines aimed at ensuring transparency, accountability, and integrity in the preparation, maintenance, and publication of electoral rolls.
This includes mechanisms for detecting and preventing duplicate or fictitious entries.
Importantly, the petition seeks directions for the ECI to publish electoral rolls in accessible, machine-readable, and OCR-compliant formats to facilitate effective verification, auditing, and public scrutiny.
Filed by advocate Rohit Pandey, the petition references Gandhi’s press conference on August 7, during which he alleged that the electoral rolls in the Mahadevapura assembly constituency of Bengaluru had been manipulated.
The plea stated,
“Upon coming across credible revelations, including a press conference dated 07.08.2025 by the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Mr. Rahul Gandhi, alleging large-scale manipulation of genuine voters’ names, and inclusion of fictitious entries in the electoral rolls of the Mahadevapura Assembly Constituency (falling within the Bengaluru Central Parliamentary Constituency), the Petitioner became gravely concerned, as such actions, if true, strike at the core of the ‘one person, one vote’ principle enshrined under Articles 325 and 326 of the Constitution,”
According to the petitioner, after independently verifying the authenticity of these reports using publicly available government data, they found sufficient prima facie evidence indicating a systemic effort to undermine the value of lawful votes, warranting urgent intervention by the Supreme Court.
Requesting a court-monitored investigation led by a former judge, the plea argued,
“The allegations of dilution of the purity of electoral rolls directly undermines the constitutional vision of free and fair elections in the eyes of the community at large,”
The PIL includes examples of alleged irregularities, such as “approximately 40,000–50,000 voters recorded with identical addresses and father’s names” in Karnataka, and “approximately 80 voters registered at one and the same address” in Chandrapur, Maharashtra.
Asserting that this issue strikes at the heart of the democratic process, the plea emphasizes,
“What is at stake here is not the outcome of a single electoral contest, but the integrity and credibility of the electoral roll itself, the bedrock upon which the entire democratic process stands.”
The reliefs sought include directions to suspend further finalization of electoral rolls until an independent audit is conducted, along with binding guidelines to ensure “transparency, accountability, and integrity in the preparation, maintenance, and publication of electoral rolls.”