Parakala Prabhakar’s recent article, titled ‘Is There Mischief Behind the ‘Miracle’ of the 2024 Andhra Pradesh Polls?’ appears to have fanned the fire. At a follow-up press conference in New Delhi, on April 2 this year, Prabhakar painted a troubling picture regarding the elections that happened two years ago. He said that around 4.16% of the total votes on May 13, 2024, were cast between 11.45 PM and 2 AM (May 14). He also said nearly 52 lakh votes were recorded between 8 PM and 2 AM, more than 17 lakh of which were cast after midnight. The most striking fact, he said, was that post-midnight, one vote was cast every 20 seconds. “If EVMs take 14 seconds to reset, how were votes being cast in as little as 6 seconds? Can a voter realistically enter, vote and exit in that time?” Prabhakar asked at the conference. This isn’t just a miracle, but rather magic, conjured by “someone-in-control”.The conjuring becomes evident if we look at the continuous spike in voter turnout announced by the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the Andhra Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) from 5 PM on May 13, the day of polling, till final turnout declared on May 17. The voter turnout in the Assembly polls was 68.04% till 5 PM, as per the CEO, whereas ECI press notes released later recorded 68.12% till 8 PM. As per subsequent press notes, the voter turnout jumped to 76.50% by 11.45 PM on May 13, and was later revised to 80.66% in the final turnout on May 17. The jump between the first and the last recorded turnout was a mind-boggling 12.62%. It can only be described as magic. ‘Free and fair’ resultsThe suspicion of conjuring is further fortified by the outlandish election results. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance, of which Telugu Desam Party (TDP) was a part, won the election by a massive vote margin, bagging 164 of the 175 seats – a strike rate of 94%. The TDP alone won 135 out of 144 seats it contested (94%). Its partner, the nascent Janasena Party (JSP) won all the 21 seats it contested (100%) and the BJP won 8 out of 10 contested seats (80%). Meanwhile, the incumbent YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) won just 11 seats. The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), comprising the Congress, Communist Party of India (CPI) and Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)), failed to win any seats. In the Lok Sabha elections too, the NDA won 21 out of 25 seats (84%) with TDP bagging 16 seats out of 17 contested, the BJP winning six, and Jansena, two. On the other hand, the YSRCP won four seats and the INDIA bloc, nil. These are extraordinarily and unbelievably high and suspicious strike rates but the ECI heralded them as “free and fair” results. Now that the cat is out of the bag, ECI is running for cover. It is treating this massive fraud as mere “discrepancies”, saying that none of the remedies available to parties in case of discrepancies were explored and that bringing up such data after two years was “unconstitutional”. “The law is clear. If any candidate or party feels there are some discrepancies in the election, then appeals need to be filed; going to the court is also an option. But none of the options were explored by candidates in Andhra Pradesh… Bringing the data after two years of the election is unconstitutional,” ECI sources said, positioning the poll body as typical of a highly compromised agency. The fact is that as early as July 18, 2024, i.e. less than two months after the 18th Lok Sabha elections (and the AP Assembly election), civil society groups coordinated by Vote For Democracy filed a notice to the ECI on the issues of gross illegalities/irregularities, vote manipulation and misconduct, spurious injection of votes, as well as violations of the model code of conduct and Supreme Court judgments.The notice sent to the three election commissioners placed on record the analysis and figures closely monitored and prepared by the civil society groups in order to bring discrepancies and unusual hike in vote percentage that grossly violates the spirit of the free and fair election and raised serious doubts about large scale spurious injection of votes that could alter the results. Since it was the general elections, the notice dealt with the matter from the Lok Sabha perspective. Nationwide discrepanciesIn Phase 1 of the Lok Sabha elections, 102 parliamentary constituencies covering 21 states/UTs went to the polls on April 19, 2024. The ECI press release on the same day observed that the voter turnout percentage till 7 PM was above 60%. However, it jumped to 66.14% when the final turnout data was released on April 30.In Phase 2, April 26, the tentative figures for voter turnout released by ECI at the end of the polling stood at 60.96%, though the circular did not give state-wise data as provided in the first phase. The final turnout data on April 30 recorded it at 66.71%, an increase of around 6%.In Phase 3, May 7, the voter turnout percentage issued by the ECI press note shows turnout at 61.45% as of 8 PM, and it was updated to 64.4% as of 11:40 PM in the next press note released close to midnight the same day. Curiously, in another press note the next day, the ECI gave updated turnout figures at 65.68% as of 10 PM, decreasing the time even as the percentage of votes increased to more than what was already recorded till 11:40 PM.In Phase 4, May 13, ECI issued two press releases: the first one reported the voter turnout at 62.84% as of 8 PM, while the second one updated the voter turnout at 67.25% as of 11:45 PM. The final turnout report was released on May 17, which recorded the figures at 69.16%. The jump was a little more than 6%. This was also the phase in which Andhra Pradesh went to polls.In Phase 5, May 20, the commission recorded 57.47% voter turnout at 7:45 PM, updated to 60.09% by 11:30 PM, as per the press note released just after midnight. The final voter turnout figure, released on May 23, then reported it at 62.20% – a 2.11% surge.In Phase 6, as per ECI’s press note issued on the polling day i.e. May 25, the voter turnout was recorded at 59.06% till 7:45 PM, but subsequently jumped to 63.37%, with a hike of 4.31%, as per the final voter turnout in the ECI’s press note on May 28.In the seventh and last phase on June 1, the initial voter turnout was 59.45% as of 8:45 PM but the ECI released another press note later that day, in which it was recorded at 61.63% as of 11:45 PM – a hike of 2.18%.No justification from ECIThe gross mismatch in the figures of votes polled and made available immediately after, and that of the secondary list days later, coupled with the failure of the ECI to abide by its legal obligations and provide 17-C forms to all candidates that are the ultimate arbiter/proof of votes polled is a pointer to two facts: a) either EVMs have been tampered or rigged, orb) machines themselves were changed/replaced which makes the entire exercise unreliable/suspect. The ECI has not provided any reasonable justification for such surges except by suggesting delays due to distance, logistics, complexity of the exercise, need for triangulation etc. These are untenable.If we take the phase-wise hike in actual numbers, it indicates a 4.65 crore spike in “polled” votes – an average of 4.72%, which is much higher than the historical variation of about 1%. In states like Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, in particular, it is staggering with over 12% variation. It might as well be considered as stealing of the entire Andhra Pradesh assembly election, along with the 79 Lok Sabha seats across states. The election commission has so far not given any satisfactory explanation to this abnormal hike, leading to the conclusion that a large-scale spurious injection of votes has taken place. According to experts, this could have been made possible through auto-casting of votes in EVMs through software manipulation during polling, particularly after the regular hours. That would explain the mysterious casting of a vote in 6 seconds. It has gone unnoticed because the ECI has deliberately suffocated the Supreme Court and introduced Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs), and there is no end-to-end verification of votes polled, recorded and counted before declaration of results. The VVPAT slips, made of thermal paper, are destroyed within weeks if not days, after the elections, leaving no trail whatever. Any CCTV documentation too has become a farce and the poll body is extremely secretive about the EVM source code.So, what we have seen were not discrepancies to be rectified through routine “remedies available to parties” – it was magic, which is difficult for the candidates to fathom. Chances are that this happened in the state assemblies of Odisha, Haryana, Maharashtra and Bihar too. The real question is, who is the conjurer?M.G. Devasahayam, formerly of the IAS, is coordinator, Citizens Commission on Elections.