Maharashtra’s Chief Electoral Office slammed the anti-India propagandist media house The Wire for spreading fake news over the recently concluded assembly election in the state which witnessed the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti storm to power with a resounding majority. Naturally, the development did not sit well with the ‘news’ organization, which, in an attempt to feed its confirmation bias, on 25th November published an article titled, “5,04,313 ‘Additional’ Votes? Maharashtra Data Mismatch Between Votes Polled and Counted” to claim that the BJP’s victory was the product of some sort of rigging in their favour and fuelled apprehensions against the constitutional body.
Notably, it is unavailable on desktop after CEO Maharashtra addressed a letter to Siddharth Varadarajan who is the founding editor of The Wire and pointed out the factual inaccuracies in the piece and called it misleading while exposing their biased agenda. Varadarajan also deleted a tweet in which he shared the same fearing action from the Election Commission for spreading falsehoods. However, the fraudulent report continues to be accessible through mobile.
The official statement referred to the report and stated, “In this regard, it is brought to your notice that the report is misleading and inaccurate, written and published in haste without accounting for the accurate details. The report has attempted to mislead readers by mischievously comparing two different parameters, as the report has included 5,38,225 postal ballots in the votes counted which was not part of the votes polled data released by CEO Maharashtra. The results portal of ECI displays ‘EVM votes’ and ‘counted valid postal votes’ separately for each AC (assembly constituency). The story has chosen not to add postal ballots in the figure of polled votes on the voter turnout APP (VTA), which was verifiable and thus sensationalised an imaginary mismatch.”
It highlighted that 6,40,88,195 votes were cast in all 288 Assembly seats in the state’s EVM, which has been “mischievously” displayed as the overall number of votes cast and noted, “The fact is that 5,38,225 valid postal ballots were not added in this figure. When we add the 5,38,225 valid postal ballots to the 6,40,88,195 votes polled in EVM; the total votes polled comes out to be 6,46,26,420. The total votes counted on the day of the counting including postal ballots is 6,45,92,508. Hence, the total votes counted are not more than the total votes polled.”
CEO Maharashtra also explained why, in certain ACs, fewer votes were counted than those required by the established procedure and clarified, “The EVM counting is not taken up if Mock Poll Data was not cleared from the Control Unit of the Polling Station before actual start of Poll or if there is non-display of result in the display panel of Control Unit or there was mismatch in data reported in Form 17C and votes recorded in EVM due to clerical or typing human error. In such cases, as the winning margin was higher than the total votes polled in these Polling Stations, counting of VVPAT Slips of these Polling Stations was not done as per instructions contained in Para No.7(iv)(b) of ECIs letter dated 19.07.2023.”
The statement then added, “Election Duty Certificates are issued to the Polling Officers on Poll Duty who are voters of the same Assembly Constituency but the number of EDC (Election Duty Certificate) votes are not included while entering data. Additionally, regarding 02 Assembly Constituencies, viz.231-Ashti and 242-Osmanabad ACS mentioned in your report where vote difference is alleged as 4538 and 4330, respectively are also misleading and irresponsible reporting.”
The press release also provided the official numbers recorded in the EVMs at AC 231 Ashti which were 282246, total postal votes were 5013 while 475 postal votes were rejected after which 4538 valid postal votes were counted. On the other hand, the total EVM votes at AC 242 Osmanabad were 238840, total postal votes were 4330 while 175 postal votes were rejected after which 4155 valid postal votes were counted.
“Given the above details, the conclusion in the article published in ‘The Wire’ that more than 5 lakh votes have been counted in excess is inaccurate and mischievous. It is expected that the above factual position will be reflected prominently in your story to avoid any misinformation to readers. The hastily drawn conclusions without due diligence have the potential to create false narratives which can not only vitiate the electoral atmosphere but can also give credence and paint a sense of authenticity to false & mischievous narratives,” the statement concluded with a stinging attack on the disinformation disseminated by the news platform.
५,०४,३१३ अतिरिक्त मते असल्याच्या तसेच आष्टी (२३१) आणि उस्मानाबाद (२४२) या दोन विधानसभा मतदारसंघांमध्ये मतांच्या संख्येत तफावत असल्याच्या The Wire या वृ्त्तपत्रात आलेल्या वृत्ताबाबत@SpokespersonECI @ECISVEEP @MahaDGIPR pic.twitter.com/qe1bkXjuUz
— ChiefElectoralOffice (@CEO_Maharashtra) November 26, 2024
“According to the Election Commission of India (ECI), the final voter turnout was 66.05%, representing 64,088,195 total votes polled (30,649,318 female; 33,437,057 male; 1820 others). However, the sum of the total votes counted is 64,592,508, which is 504,313 over the total votes polled. This difference of 5,04,313 represents the net additional votes counted across the state,” the article claimed to cast aspersions on the constitutional body and added, “This difference of 5,04,313 represents the net additional votes counted across the state.”
It continued its deliberately flawed assessment and stated, “While in eight constituencies the number of votes counted was less than the votes polled, in the remaining 280 constituencies, the votes counted exceeded the votes polled. The greatest discrepancies were noted in the Ashti constituency, where 4,538 more votes were counted than polled, and in the Osmanabad constituency, where the difference was 4,155 votes.”
The article even stressed its equally distorted evaluation of the voter turnout during the latest Lok Sabha election which was debunked earlier and claimed, “These discrepancies are reminiscent of concerns raised during the May 2024 Lok Sabha elections regarding voter turnout data and Form 17C, which records the number of votes polled at each polling station. At that time, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) petitioned the Supreme Court for the release of polling station-wise voter turnout data within 48 hours of each polling phase, citing discrepancies of 5-6% between initial and final turnout figures.”
Now, that the fake news vendor The Wire has been exposed for what it is, it opted to cowardly delete the post quietly rather than rectify it or issue an apology for deceiving the public.
Siddharth Varadarajan, the cofounder of the far-left propaganda portal, quietly pulled down the tweet where he shared the article riddled with falsehoods.
The Wire spread falsehoods with its Meta, Tek Fog stories
Incidentally, this is not the first time that The Wire has suffered the ignominy of being caught shamelessly peddling fake news. In November 2022, The Wire was forced to withhold its series of reports that said BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya had some superpowers to remove posts from Meta-owned Instagram. The claims were found to be baseless and premised on fabricated evidence, following which The Wire had to retract its stories. The Wire had then claimed to have launched an ‘internal review’ after the reports were found to be completely fake, the findings of which are yet to be released to the public.
Similarly, The Wire also suspended another fake story from January 2022 that spoke about the existence of a fictitious and mysterious app named ‘Tek Fog’, which it claimed allowed the BJP to bypass all security measures available in top social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram etc, and create and delete dozens of accounts at the click of a button. They claimed the BJP could hijack social media trends and target hatred towards journalists using the app. They claimed that the app can bypass email and OTP verifications required to log on to those platforms to create temporary accounts.
Similar to the Meta story, netizens had exposed the massive loopholes in the Tek Fog story too. That story also entirely relied on ‘screenshots’ of the so-called app, and didn’t have any other verifiable evidence. It was fiercely contested by independent tech analysts, many of whom were ridiculed as BJP supporters by The Wire and its supporters. However, ultimately, The Wire had to retract its stories after it was exposed for running a hit-job against the Modi government.
