After the third phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections ended on Tuesday with a 64.58% voter turnout, the Congress demanded that the ECI immediately release the final figures of voter turnout. The Opposition has raised questions over "discrepancies" in the final turnout and provisional turnout figures released by the Election Commission of India.
A day before the Phase 3 voting, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge wrote to the party's I.N.D.I.A bloc allies urging them to unitedly protest "discrepancies" in the ECI's voter turnout data and the "delays" in releasing the final figures. He said this was crucial to "protect the culture of a vibrant democracy and the Constitution".
Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, too, had raised questions over the increase in polling percentage. She even levelled serious allegations about the security of the electronic voting machines, saying: "At night, these people go and break the lock and change the machine, they are inserting the machine that voted for the BJP."
Earlier, Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena had also questioned the ECI over the turnout figures and alleged that the poll body was trying to provide backdoor help to someone.
Right after the third phase ended on Tuesday, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that the ECI needed to release the final polling figures immediately, "unlike the first phase which took 11 days and the second 4 days". "The Election Commission of India is expected to release the final polling percentage data for the third phase without any delay... We expect it to be in the same format as it has been in previous years – with the number of votes and registered voters separately for each assembly constituency and Lok Sabha," Jairam Ramesh said in an X post.
'Congress Has Hijacked BJP's Poll Campaign'
Jairam Ramesh further said that based on the trends so far, "it is quite clear that BJP is going to be wiped out in the South and halved in the North". "Result: Prime Minister is panicking. He is sounding more desperate and frustrated in his speeches. He is spreading an epidemic of lies and is relying solely on distortion of facts, distraction, and defamation for his election campaign," he said.
He alleged that the saffron party's campaign is completely dependent on communal bias and hatred, "in which religion and religious symbols are being openly misused".
"On the contrary, Congress's positive campaign has been strong and fully empowered. We have even hijacked the BJP's election campaign. Our Nyaya Patra has become the centrepiece of their campaign. The fear they are spreading in desperation is due to the impact of our guarantees," Ramesh said.
Jairam Ramesh's 'Jhola' Dig
He ended his post with a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his 'Arre hum to fakir aadmi hain, jhola leke chal padenge ji' speech in Uttar Pradesh's Moradabad in 2016. The clip went viral and is still used as a template for memes today.
Jairam Ramesh's tweet on Tuesday evening read #JholaTaiyarHai, an apparent reference to that speech, indicating that the Congress and its allies would win the Lok Sabha Elections and send the BJP packing.