In the wake of a slew of allegations of vote rigging, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Rohit Pawar, on Thursday (October 16, 2025), highlighted technical anomalies with evidence in the voting process in the 2024 Assembly elections held in Maharashtra.
He gave a live demonstration of registering a voter in the name of “Donald Tatya Trump”, along with Trump’s photo, based on a bogus Aadhaar card, in the Karjat constituency’s voter list, with a fake address, during an interaction with media persons in Mumbai.
Calling it “Democracy Theft”, Mr. Pawar, also nephew of former Chief Minister Sharad Pawar, said, “Many people have taken out Aadhaar cards just like Donald Trump’s Aadhaar card and made several fake ID cards.”
“Our IT expert searched for one such website and came across this website. This website does not conduct cross-verification; the fake ID, Aadhaar number and demographic details have been used to create such voter IDs. The election officers are blindly conducting elections.”
Stressing on the increase of voters between 2019 and 2024, Mr. Pawar said, “In Lok Sabha polls, 32 lakh voters were added, 6.5 lakh voters per year increased or 54,000 per month. In six months alone, after the Lok Sabha, during the Maharashtra assembly polls, 48 lakh voters were added.”
On the lines of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Rohit Pawar gave a presentation, citing examples of addition, deletion, and duplication of voters in Maharashtra’s voter list. A day ago, a delegation of the opposition met representatives of the State Election Commission (SEC) and Central Election Commission (CEC), raising concerns around vote rigging and aiming for fair elections to be conducted in the upcoming local body polls.
He cited the example of his own constituency, the Karjat Jamkhed assembly. In six months, 14,162 duplicate names were added to voter rolls post Lok Sabha elections.
“Our party functionaries went to search for them in these constituencies. We did not find any. BJP office bearer had access to the EC voter list,” said Mr. Pawar, adding, “Say anything you want, but vote chori has happened, and now we have evidence.”
‘BJP office bearer had access to the EC voter list’
He alleged that a methodology was designed by a BJP office bearer. “The EC and Bharatiya Janata Party office bearer Devang Dave had control over the commission’s website. Due to this, the general public has lost faith in the commission,” said Rohit Pawar.
“Before us, Dave knew everything. Dave has done the work of adding and deleting things. So, the Election Commission should analyse the voter increase, provide information about the increase in voters,” he said.
He demanded EC to provide an analysis of voter turnout, the reason for the large increase in voters in each constituency should be explained in writing, official data should be provided along with photocopies of voters registered and names excluded from the 2024 Assembly Elections to July 1, 2025, the digital updated voter lists, the DLO diary should be made available to official political parties for inspection, and others.
‘BJP is poaching’
Mr. Pawar also alleged that the BJP has been poaching Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s MLAs and made a prediction that several MLAs will join the BJP before the 2029 elections.
“MLAs of Shiv Sena and NCP are in touch with BJP, within a blink of an eye, 20-25 MLAs will leave. Look at Ahilyanagar’s NCP MLA Sangram Jagtap, despite Ajit Pawar restraining him from making hate speeches, he continues to do that.”
Published – October 17, 2025 10:33 am IST
