New Delhi: Electoral officials in Pune have been seized of alleged attempts to fraudulently shift the names of voters to other constituencies, many of which were made through a single IP address and involved fake electricity bills, per an investigation by the Indian Express.Produced by the Express‘s Pune correspondent Soham Shah, the investigation released on Saturday (November 14) also details one such set of allegations made by a local politician, following which an official inquiry found that the authorities had accepted applications to modify voters’ entries without conducting field verifications.The alleged fraudulent attempts join the slew of such incidents that have come to light during the special intensive revision (SIR) of voter rolls across the country – many of them allegedly by booth-level agents of the BJP – including some that are said to have occurred well before the exercise kicked off.Per the Express‘s report, Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Gavhane complained to Maharashtra’s chief electoral officer (CEO) S. Chockalingam on November 19, 2025 that at least 58 voters living in Pune’s Bhosari constituency had their electoral roll entries fraudulently deleted from there and moved to other seats even though had neither shifted nor filed applications seeking any modifications.Fifty-one of the 58 individuals whom Gavhane had flagged were Muslim, according to the Express. An associate of Gavhane’s who collated the names also claimed that his list of voters was merely representative and that the actual number of people affected was much higher.Chockalingam ordered an inquiry the next day and Pune’s DEO submitted a report on January 27, 2026 citing electoral officials in his jurisdiction and in Thane as admitting that forms submitted for changing the addresses of 53 of these individuals were accepted on the basis of documents submitted but without any field verification by booth-level officers, the Express said.Later this year, Shah reported, the Pune DEO ultimately determined that Form 6 applications were filed online in connection with 43 of the 58 individuals concerned in order for them to be ‘brought back’ onto Bhosari’s voter rolls. Eleven others were found to be ‘living where they were registered’ while three others had died.Though Pune’s DEO had submitted his report in January, the next communication by Chockalingam on the issue on the record came only on November 2 – last week – after the Express contacted his office for comment, Shah wrote on X. Meanwhile, the DEO on October 31 directed that electoral officers initiate action against those found responsible.Shah also reported that six people on Gavhane’s list told him they had neither shifted nor filed applications to have their voter details modified. One of them, Salar Shaikh, alleged that his name was deleted from the rolls entirely during the Maharashtra SIR.More than a year prior to Gavhane’s complaint, the then-Pune DEO in October 2024 had alerted the CEO of alleged attempts to fraudulently shift the entries of a large number of electors by way of electricity bills, many of which belonged to just a single person. Many such applications were also filed from one IP address, the Express cited the DEO as saying.In March 2025 the DEO said verification had revealed that the voters concerned had not actually shifted their residences.That Forms 6 were reportedly filed to get 43 people back on Bhosari’s rolls is significant – if indeed they were wrongly deleted from there – because the form is intended for first-time electors, not those who were incorrectly excluded from the list or had their details fraudulently modified.In fact, following backlash over the conduct of the SIR in the wake of the Express‘s landmark investigation in September led by Ritika Chopra, the Election Commission has belatedly allowed left out voters to fill up enumeration forms instead of Forms 6 to ensure their inclusion, albeit only in the seven states where the SIR is ongoing.Alleged concerted attempts to fraudulently delete voter entries had prominently surfaced in September last year, when Lok Sabha leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi pointed to incidents in Karnataka’s Aland and Maharashtra’s Rajura. Since then, attempts by BJP booth-level agents to delete names, many of them Muslim, have also come to light from across the country.