At a hastily called joint press conference at the Sena Bhavan, which was also attended by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Bala Nandgaonkar, NCP (SP) chief Jayant Patil and Congress’ Sachin Sawant, Raut referred to MNS president Raj Thackeray’s claim that around 96 lakh “fake” voters have been added to the electoral roll of Maharashtra before the local elections.
He demanded that the election body remove around “one crore fake voters” from the state’s electoral rolls.
He said ruling party MPs Manda Mhatre (BJP) and Sanjay Gaikwad (Shiv Sena) also spoke about duplication of voters and irregularities in electoral rolls.
“The electoral rolls should be clean. All major parties except the ruling parties are raising this issue. The Election Commission is not ready to accept that the electoral rolls are not clean. We need to give a fillip to the EC by taking to the streets. So on November 1, there will be a big rally of all opposition parties against the corrupt act of the EC in Mumbai,” Raut said.
Thousands of people who lost their right to vote will take to the streets and show their strength, he said.
The rally will be led by NCP (SP) president Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray and MNS’s Raj Thackeray, he said, adding that invitations will also be extended to senior Congress leaders.
The Rajya Sabha MP said Pawar and the Thackeray cousins would address another press conference on the issue in the coming days.
“If the EC wants to give us a challenge, we are ready to accept it,” Raut said.
Earlier in the day, Raj Thackeray claimed that 96 lakh fake voters were added to the electoral rolls in Maharashtra and challenged the Election Commission, asking how it would conduct the local body polls without cleaning the electoral roll.
Pawar, the Thackeray cousins and other opposition leaders met state election commissioner Dinesh Waghmare and chief electoral officer S Chockalingam on October 14, submitting representations on alleged discrepancies in the electoral rolls.
The opposition has called for rectification of electoral rolls and elimination of anomalies before the rural and urban elections, which are due to be completed by January 31, 2026.
The Maharashtra State Election Commission on Saturday said that no political party can tamper with electoral rolls and corrections and updates of electoral rolls are handled securely.
Speaking at the press conference, Congress leader Sachin Sawant claimed that there were irregularities in the electoral roll and the opposition leaders did not have the opportunity to correct them.
This is detrimental to democracy, he said.
MNS leader Nandgaonkar said the poll body had realized that there was a disorder and the November 1 protest would reflect the public outcry.
Terming the EC’s response as “unsatisfactory”, NCP (SP) leader Jayant Patil said the opposition was also ready for the ruling parties to participate in the morcha, against those who want to harm democracy.
“We hope the election body will rectify its mistake,” Patil said.
