Visakhapatnam: In his exposé on August 7, Congress’s Rahul Gandhi, who is leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, identified 100,250 fake voters in the Mahadevapura (SC) assembly segment of the Bangalore Central parliamentary segment during the 2024 Lok Sabha election. According to Gandhi, 33,962 of these – approximately 33.6% of the verified fake voters – were due to the misuse of Form 6.Form 6 is used to add new voters to electoral rolls.Fresh questions on MaharashtraThis figure immediately drew attention to the 40.8 lakh new voters added in Maharashtra in just five months, between the 2024 general election and the 2024 Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha elections. This specific allegation was made by Rahul Gandhi in the Indian Express.The number assumes even more significance in light of the dramatic reversal for the ruling BJP. After being trumped by the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) and winning only 17 of 48 seats with a 32% strike rate in the Lok Sabha elections in May 2024, the BJP spiked, winning 132 of 149 assembly segments with an 89% strike rate just five months later.Voter additions are a routine feature. But the scale of additions in those five months in 2024 was not.Election YearVoter Additions (LS to Assembly)200429.53 lakh200930.14 lakh201427.29 lakh201911.61 lakh202440.8 lakhThe 2024 surge was unprecedented; a 250% leap from 2019 and a 35% jump from the previous high. This leap pushed the final registered voter total to 9.70 crore, which is greater than the government’s own estimate of the total adult (18+) population in Maharashtra: 9.54 crore.Gandhi alleged this surge was not random but was strategically targeted to benefit the BJP. He further alleged that bogus voting occurred in about 12,000 booths across 85 specific constituencies where the BJP had performed poorly in the preceding Lok Sabha elections.He used the Kamthi assembly segment as a case study. There, INC voting remained stable between the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections (1.36 lakh vs 1.34 lakh). He points out, however, that the BJP’s vote increased massively from 1.19 lakh to 1.75 lakh, a gain of 56,000 votes. Gandhi linked this increase to the 35,000 new voters added to the rolls in Kamthi, suggesting they were “magnetically drawn to the BJP.”Also read: Why the Response to Rahul Gandhi’s Accusation of a Stolen Election Is Less Than ConvincingNagpur South West Assembly segmentA Newslaundry investigation found a similar pattern in the Nagpur South West assembly segment, represented by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. In this seat, 29,219 new voters were added in the five-month window, an 8.25% increase in the total electorate. This figure is more than double the Election Commission of India’s 4% internal threshold, a “red flag” designed to trigger intense, multi-tier verification.Newslaundry reporters also found the surge was systemic across the constituency. An astonishing 263 of its 378 polling booths (nearly 70%) breached this 4% threshold. In 26 booths, the increase was over 20%, and in four, it was over 40% – numbers that defy any explanation based on natural demographics.Winning marginsIf the 40.8 lakh additions were distributed uniformly across Maharashtra’s 288 assembly segments, it would add an average of 14,167 new voters to every single constituency. In Indian elections, where dozens of seats are won or lost by margins of less than 10,000, this number is not just significant; it could be potentially decisive.The most compelling evidence emerges when connecting the pre-election voter surge to the post-election results. A look at the victory margins reveals the asymmetry of the National Democratic Alliance – Mahayuti – win.The average (mean) winning margin shows a lopsided contest. Mahayuti’s average winning margin was 40,180 votes; the MVA’s was 19,205. The Mahayuti, on average, won its seats by more than double the margin of its opponent. This is a staggering gap, but the average tells only part of the story.To truly understand the nature of these victories, we must consider the median. Mahayuti secured 16 victories with margins exceeding 1 lakh votes, while the MVA had none. These massive, outlier victories would dramatically inflate the Mahayuti’s average margin, a classic statistical signature of a top-heavy, skewed distribution. This means, a victory pattern built on a significant number of comfortable wins, topped by a substantial number of super-landslides.Conversely, the MVA, with far fewer extreme outliers, would have an average margin much closer to its median. Their wins were more clustered and less dominant. The Mahayuti didn’t just win bigger on average; its victory pattern was fundamentally different, characterised by a level of dominance in a significant number of seats that has no parallel on the opposition’s side.Furthermore, the Mahayuti won a staggering 138 seats with over 50% of the vote share. This demonstrates absolute dominance where they won more votes than all other candidates combined. In stark contrast, the MVA managed to cross the 50% mark in only 16 seats. Such a lopsided distribution of dominance is statistically anomalous and deviates from patterns seen in elections driven by a simple swing in public mood.The convergence of these phenomena forms the crux of the issue.The Mahayuti achieved its dominant, 50%-plus vote share in 52 Assembly segments where it had been trailing during the Lok Sabha polls.This raises the most unavoidable question of the entire election. To what extent can the unprecedented and geographically focussed addition of 40.8 lakh new voters help explain how the BJP reversed its fortunes so dramatically in just five months in Maharashtra?