Maharashtra MLA Aditya Thackeray levelled vote chori allegations on Friday — flagging ‘massive irregularities in the draft voter list for municipal elections. The Shiv Sena (UBT) leader noted that the issue had also been raised during a meeting earlier this year — contending that approval of the voter list as of July 1 would disenfranchise new voters. Thackeray demanded the suspension of the State Election Commissioner and insisted that a sedition case should be registered if these errors were deliberate.
“There are flaws in the lists. Voters from one ward have been added to another. They could not change ward boundaries, so they have picked voter lists and mixed them with others. The BJP and Shiv Sena are shifting people from one booth to another for their benefit and to weaken strong booths of the opponents,” he alleged.
“A lot of evidence are surfacing that imply additions and deletions in the electoral rolls and a lot of voters were removed in Bihar under SIR. LoP Rahul Gandhi even held 2 press conferences regarding the addition and deletions in Haryana and Karnataka. Aaditya Thackeray himself mentioned how duplication of voters and voting patterns was repeated in his own constituency, which was also visible in the records in Patna. If the Election Commission will not answer clearly, it will prove that the election outcomes are being affected through manipulation of electoral rolls,” added fellow Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi.
What are the allegations?
The Opposition MLA led a press conference on Friday to highlight the alleged discrepancies — reminiscent of the vote chori pressers held by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. The ruling BJP however dismissed the allegations and claimed that Thackeray was blaming the voters list because his party was staring at defeat in the upcoming polls.
Thackeray said the Shiv Sena (UBT) had reviewed sections of the draft rolls and found “unacceptable and deliberate” mistakes. He cited instances where there were duplicate and even triplicate entries for the same voter. The rolls also allegedly include the names of people who did not exist, and in some cases show 40 to 50 voters registered at cramped addresses that could not possibly house so many people. Thackeray claimed that the scale of the scale of the discrepancies suggested that the election process had been compromised before the campaign had even begun.
BMC elections in 2026
Elections to various municipal corporations in the state — including the 227-member Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation — are expected to be held in January 2026.
