Congress leader Rahul Gandhi recently accused the Election Commission of India (EC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of orchestrating large-scale electoral fraud in the 2024 Haryana assembly polls, claiming that 25 lakh votes were stolen, including 5.21 lakh duplicate entries. At the heart of the controversy is a voter-list clean-up tool developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) for the EC, designed to flag duplicate and photo-similar entries. The software was last used during the 2022 Special Summary Revision (SSR), but has since lain dormant. Gandhi alleged that among the duplicate entries was the photograph of a Brazilian model, listed under multiple names across booths, highlighting what he termed “a centralised operation”.

The EC has responded by pointing out that the Congress did not raise objections during roll-revision or polling in Haryana and questions why booth-level agents did not flag suspected multiple-voting at the time. Analysts note that the dormant software raises concerns about electoral-roll integrity and underscores the scale of challenges faced in maintaining clean voter lists. The controversy now spotlights not just alleged fraud but the governance of electoral data and tools meant to preserve democratic transparency.