Votes in 6 seconds, 4% cast after midnight: Major allegations over Andhra polls

Nearly 17 lakh votes after midnight. Votes cast within six seconds. These were some of the "unusual" voting patterns flagged at a press conference in Delhi over the 2024 Andhra Pradesh assembly elections. In the elections, the NDA, led by Chandrababu Naidu's TDP, got a decisive mandate, winning 164 of the 175 seats. Leading the charge, economist Parakala Prabhakar claimed that polling continued till 2 am across 3,500 booths.

Prabhakar claimed data painted a troubling picture - around 4.16% of the total votes were cast between 11.45 pm and 2 am. He said nearly 52 lakh votes were recorded between 8 pm and 2 am. More than 17 lakh votes were cast after midnight alone. He said the most striking fact was that post-midnight, one vote was cast every 20 seconds.

"If EVMs take 14 seconds to reset, how were votes being cast in as little as 6 seconds? Can a voter realistically enter, vote and exit in that time?" Prabhakar said. He concluded by underlining that "something unusual" happened after 8 pm.

The elections saw Chandrababu Naidu returning as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh for a fourth time. While the TDP secured 135 seats, the BJP won eight, and Pawan Kalyan's Jana Sena bagged 21.

Even before today, the opposition and other experts had raised red flags over the voter turnout data.

After polling ended on May 13, 2024, at 5 pm, Andhra's Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) announced to the media that 68.04% votes were polled. The ECI, in a release at 8 pm, said the voter turnout was 68.12%. At 11.45 pm, the ECI revised the turnout to 76.50%. The final voter turnout, which was released four days later, put the figure at 81.79%.

'LACK OF TRANSPARENCY'

Speaking at the press conference, senior advocate Prashant Bhushan zeroed in on the lack of transparency in the election process.

Bhushan questioned why Form 17C - which includes data on the number of votes polled in each booth - had not been made public. He also pointed out that voter lists were not released in machine-readable formats, making independent verification difficult. The same concern was raised by Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi during his vote chori (theft) allegations last year against the BJP.

"Resistance to transparency signals a deeper institutional problem. Democracy can't run in the dark," Bhushan said. To ensure credibility, he demanded mandatory counting of VVPAT slips.

He also pointed out the absence of a public record of voters in the queue after polling hours, and real-time access to booth-level data. Without these, he warned, large-scale manipulation could occur unnoticed.

CALL FOR AUDIT

Seconding the concerns, former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi sought an audit of election records, including Form 17C and Form 20. Form 20 is the final result sheet prepared by the returning officer after the counting of votes in an election.

"If Form 17C is signed and sealed at the booth level, why do discrepancies appear later in aggregated data?" he said.

Quraishi, a vocal critic of the election process, suggested same-day disclosure of polling percentages and immediate release of booth-level summaries.

- Ends

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