Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 13 (IANS) Senior Congress legislator Ramesh Chennithala on Wednesday recalled a major voter list fraud in Kerala, alleging that the scale of manipulation exposed by senior party leader Rahul Gandhi at the national level mirrors a pattern already seen in the state.

Chennithala said the “heinous attempt” to subvert democracy by adding tens of thousands of fake votes constitutes a grave act of treason, and accused the Election Commission — the body responsible for ensuring free and fair polls — of becoming “an instrument for subversion”.

He claimed this was not an isolated incident, citing his own 2021 revelation of large-scale electoral fraud in Kerala.

“On March 17, 2021, at a press conference in the KPCC office, I presented evidence of duplicate and fake votes in the final voter list published ahead of the Assembly polls,” Chennithala said.

As an example, he pointed to a case in Uduma constituency, Kasaragod, where the details of a 61-year-old voter named Kumari were used to create five fake voter IDs, all registered in the same or nearby booths.

Initial checks in seven constituencies revealed thousands of duplicate entries — including Kazhakoottam (4,506), Kollam (2,534), Thrikkarippur (1,436), Koyilandy (4,611), Nadapuram (6,171), Kuthuparamba (3,525), and Ambalappuzha (4,750).

Further inspections across 140 constituencies uncovered an estimated 4.34 lakh duplicate or fake votes.

Although the Election Commission eventually admitted to 38,000 duplicate votes and the Kerala High Court ordered their removal by March 31, 2021, the Congress leader says it is still unclear how many were deleted.

“We estimate that the real figure may have exceeded one million fake votes — more than enough to influence the outcome of the 2021 election,: said Chennithala.

He alleged that while BJP-led vote fraud occurred under its Central government, Kerala’s version happened under the CPI-M’s rule — showing that “both parties use the same tactics to cling to power, often helping each other”.

The leader posed six questions to the Election Commission, including how many of the identified fake votes were removed, who was held responsible, and whether these votes remained in the rolls during the recent Lok Sabha polls.

Finally, he pointed to the Thrissur Lok Sabha constituency — won by BJP’s Suresh Gopi — where fresh allegations of voter list tampering have surfaced.

“Now it remains to be known if the CPI-M knowingly manipulated the rolls to ensure the BJP victory (of Suresh Gopi). This can be called ‘Pooram-style fixing’ at the Thrissur Lok Sabha constituency,” said Chennithala.

–IANS

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