New Delhi: Ahead of the upcoming Assembly elections in Bihar, the Congress is running a high-voltage campaign, alleging a nexus between the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the BJP to ‘manipulate’ voter rolls across multiple states to ‘rig’ the results.
Away from the public eye, however, the party is also focused on fixing internal gaps in its election management, acknowledging organisational weaknesses and offering ways to address them at multiple levels.
Brochures developed by the party’s training department on election preparedness reflect candid assessments of the lapses—from poor voter outreach and low booth-level presence to lack of trained polling agents on election day. These documents have been made available across the organisational hierarchy, from state units to grassroots workers.
The brochures cover a wide range of election-related activities: conducting house visits, scrutinising voter rolls, appointing Booth Level Agents (BLAs) and polling agents, and overseeing Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during polling.
One such document focusing on door-to-door campaigning admits that the party has fallen behind in personalised voter engagement, a Congress shortcoming that has, in recent years, stood out in stark contrast to the BJP’s booth-level push.
“In recent electoral political campaigns, it has been found that our performance is very poor when it comes to reaching out to the voters. Our campaigns, most often, remain at the community level and do not directly connect with families and individuals. This results in less voter turnout in our favour. On the other hand, divisive politics percolates to families and individuals through TV channels and social media. It is a political challenge for us to reach out to families and individuals during electoral political campaigns,” it states.
The document lays out a structured plan to strengthen family-level outreach and build direct voter connections. The Congress literature for party workers on EVMs is also self-reflective.
“In recent times, we have heard about malfunctioning EVMs. In general, many voters have cast doubt on their proper functioning. Whenever there is a faulty EVM or complaints about EVMs, the polling agent can make an objection and ask for an investigation into the matter. However, most of the time, polling agents are themselves not present at polling stations, or they are unaware of how and where to make an objection. On the day of polling, the absence of polling agents results in the lack of any regulatory control over possible rigging and fraud, which may result in the loss of the election,” it notes.
The brochure “How to become a polling agent and monitor EVMs” offers a step-by-step to-do-list for workers signing up as polling agents—from checking seals of EVMs to collecting Form 17-C containing booth-wise voter turnout data.
The Congress has also developed a booklet on activities of BLAs, which is a position created by the ECI for representatives of political parties to oversee voter deletion, addition and correction procedure during preparation of electoral rolls. The booklet points out that in the recent past, there have been widespread reports of abrupt removal of voter entries from voter lists.
“In hotly contested elections, this is used as a deliberate tactic … There have also been cases of fake voter’s additions to the voter lists. Fake voter’s entries are made to win elections through fraud. A BLA is our party worker with a legal right to file objections on fake voters and do ground verification of voters with the help of BLO,” it says.
The BLAs have found themselves under the spotlight during the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar. Of the 1.6 lakh BLAs, recognised by the ECI, working on the ground, the BJP has 53,338, RJD 47,506, Congress 17,549 and CPI(ML) 1,496.
However, the ECI claims to have received only 25 claims for inclusion and 103 for exclusion from the BLAs of RJD and CPI(ML) till 31 August, with the deadline being 1 September. Individual voters have filed 33,326 and 2,07,565 claims and objections for inclusion and exclusion respectively, ECI records show.
Even the Supreme Court of India had last week expressed surprise over the lack of claims and objections filed by the parties considering the extent of opposition to the SIR.
On Sunday, addressing a press conference in Patna, senior Congress leader Pawan Khera alleged that while the “EC keeps getting news planted through its sources that no complaints are coming from any political party”.
“The truth is that the Congress submitted 89 lakh complaints pertaining to irregularities in the SIR to the EC,” he said. Khera claimed that the complaints of Congress-appointed BLAs were turned down by the ECI.
PTI reported that, in its response, the ECI initially claimed no BLA submitted any claim or objection, but in another statement a few hours later, asserted that the complaints of the Congress were not received in the prescribed format, and needful steps are being taken.
A senior CPI (ML) leader told ThePrint that filing objections was easier said than done with “EC officials on the ground stonewalling such attempts,” resulting in parties getting people to file objections at the individual level.
Meanwhile, the Congress brochure seeks to introduce the party’s workers to the technicalities of Form-6 (for new voter enrolment), Form-7 (removal or deletion of dead voters), and Form-8 (correction and shifting of names).
A Congress training department volunteer involved in the preparation of the brochures told ThePrint that the demand for these brochures and training sessions at the ground level for understanding the nitty-gritty of voter list revisions has significantly gone up ever since Rahhul Gandhi held a press conference, alleging large scale manipulation of electoral rolls at an assembly constituency in Bengaluru during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: Playing parai, working charkha & learning Jiu-Jitsu. Congress has a new Rahul-inspired training module
