Out of the 10 seats that the Sharad Pawar-led faction of the Nationalist Congress Party won in the Maharashtra Assembly elections held last month, one is Malshiras in the district of Solapur, around 306 km south-east of Mumbai.

A section of the voters in one particular village in Malshiras, Markadwadi, are upset with not the outcome, but a tiny detail. They argue the BJP nominee and former sitting MLA, Ram Satpute, could not have bagged the number of votes that he did – though he lost to Pawar’s candidate.

The voters want the polling to be held again on Tuesday – this time with ballot papers, ignoring the frowns of the local administration.

“Ask anyone in Markadwadi and they will tell you that Satpute could not have got more than 150 votes in our village,” said Sachin Waghmode, a resident of Markadwadi, who works in a private firm in Solapur town.

“In our village, Satpute got around 843 votes. The situation is the same in the adjoining village of Umbadi Dahigaon. Even his supporters are surprised [with the votes he had received],” Waghmode said.

The demand from the villagers has come at a time the Maha Vikas Agadhi, which comprises the Congress, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena faction and the Sharad Pawar-led NCP faction, have complained to the Election Commission about the Maharashtra elections that the ruling Mahayuti coalition swept.

The Markadwadi villagers had demanded a re-poll but it was turned down, Waghmode said. They have decided on holding a paper election on their own.

“Aisa kuchh nahin hai [There is no such thing],” said Suresh Sejul, tehsildar of Malshiras. Malshiras is the Assembly seat of which Markadwadi is a part.

Malshiras is a part of the Madha Lok Sabha constituency, which Mohite Patil of Sharad Pawar’s outfit won in this summer’s Lok Sabha polls.

“There is no such provision [to hold elections on public demand]. I am not in Malshiras right now and do not have all the facts related to this matter,” Shejul told The Telegraph Online.

According to Article 324 of the Constitution, the sole authority for the conduct of parliamentary and Assembly elections, and those to the offices of the President and Vice-President, rests with the Election Commission of India, which comprises of a chief election commissioner and two election commissioners.

Under the Narendra Modi dispensation, the role of the central poll panel has often been questioned. The outcome of the Maharashtra Assembly polls, which was swept by the BJP-led Mahayuti is the latest in a series of controversies over elections.

The Opposition leaders are sceptical about whether the administration will let the poll process take place in Markadwadi.

“It is good that the villagers have taken up this step, though it is doubtful if the administration will actually allow them to go through the process,” said a senior Congress leader from Maharashtra.

The MVA members have raised questions over the alleged arbitrary deletion and addition of voters ahead of the elections and a sharp increase in voter turnout after the end of polling.

Economist Parakala Prabhakar had flagged the data in a post on his X (formerly Twitter) handle on November 24, a day after the counting of votes.

He had written: “What is the Maharashtra Magic? 5:00 pm 20/11/24 Vote % : 58.22. 11:30 pm (on the same day) Vote % : 65.02 Before counting Final figure: 66.05%. Discrepancy: 6.80% + 1.03% = 7.83% So that is the Maharashtra Magic!”

Later in an interview with Karan Thapar, Prabhakar said: “By 11.30pm, that percentage has gone up to 65.02%, which gross figure would be 6,30,85,732. Between 5pm and 11.30pm, the total hike in gross number is 65,97,708. In other words, about 66 lakh. But the hike doesn’t end there. Just a few hours before the counting, again, there was an increase of 9,99,359. That’s almost about 10 lakh. All put together, from 5 o’clock on the 20th to 11.30pm on the 20th, and some 12 hours before counting, the total increase was 75,97,067. That’s about 76 lakh.”

The Congress has alleged that the electoral roll was revised with an additional 47 lakh voters between the Lok Sabha held earlier this year and the state elections held last month.

“With this exercise of unchecked and arbitrary deletion and consequent insertion of voters, the state of Maharashtra witnessed an unprecedented increase of an estimated 47 lakh voters being added to the electoral roll from between July 2024-November 2024,” the Congress wrote in a memorandum submitted to the EC last week.

The Election Commission will meet the Congress representatives on Tuesday at 5 pm.

“On October 19, 2024 MVA parties had written to the Election Commission of India that the BJP is engaged in massive voter list fraud, which includes deletion of 10,000 votes of MVA supporters in each constituency. It was also informed that BJP was adding 10,000 fake voters to hide 10,000 names being deleted by them,” wrote Gurdeep Singh Sappal, a permanent invitee to the Congress working committee, on his X handle on November 28, five days after the results were declared.

“The vote lost by Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT) from Lok Sabha to Vidhan Sabha totals 47.1lakh. New voters added were 47 lakh.”

The Congress has also alleged that the Mahayuti won 47 of the 50 seats in which the number of voters allegedly had an increase by around 50,000.

Former Maharashtra chief minister and senior Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan has demanded a complete tally of the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) with the votes polled.

“All I am saying is that the Election Commission should go for counting of all the VVPATs,” said Chavan. “Counting of the VVPAT will help the people retain their faith in the polling system. If the Election Commission does not do it, then doubts will remain if it has something to hide.”

The Supreme Court last week dismissed a plea seeking to revert to paper ballot voting in elections in the country.

"What happens is, when you win the election, EVMs are not tampered with. When you lose the election, EVMs are tampered (with)," remarked a bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice P.B. Varale.

The voters in Markadwadi, however, have asked the question after a victory by the Opposition.

“People of Markadwadi are determined. Whatever happens will be in front of everyone. If the BJP is not afraid why so many cops are coming to the village?” asked Jankar, the winning candidate who was at the village on Monday, while the villagers were debating whether to proceed with the paper poll or not.