No, 6 lakh of votes polled for Rahul Gandhi were not deleted - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
May 24, 2019
The 17th Loksabha election results have given a majority to BJP.  Since the declaration of results, a post is going viral on social media with a claim that 6 lakh votes polled to Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad constituency were deleted and the post raised questions on BJP IT cell having access to ECI backend database. Let’s analyse if the said number of votes were actually deleted.
6 lakh of votes polled for Rahul Gandhi were deleted.
Fact: The total votes polled in the Wayanad constituency during the 3rd phase of elections is only 10,90,072 and hence there is no way Rahul Gandhi could have got about 13,37,438 votes. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
During the counting for 17th parliamentary elections yesterday, at one point of time, the ECI website displayed the vote polled to Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad constituency as 13,37,438 and later updated it to 7,05,034 by the end of counting. The has give rise to speculations that about 6 lakh votes polled to Rahul Gandhi were deleted by BJP IT cell and hinting it has access to ECI backend database.
If we download the VOTER TURNOUT Android mobile app launched by Election Commission of India and filter the votes polled for Wayanad constituency during the 3rd phase of General Election 2019, you will find out that the total votes polled across the Wayanad constituency stands at 10,90,072 out of a total eligible voters of 13,57,819. So  The ECI could have displayed the votes polled to Rahul Gandhi at 13,37,438 by mistake as there is no way for Rahul Gandhi to get more than the votes polled in the constituency. The ECI later updated the actual numbers which is about 6 lakh votes less than earlier figure.  Even the document released by the Chief Electoral Officer, Kerala in January 2019 puts the total number of registered voters in Wayanad as 13.25 lakh.
To sum it up, the votes polled to Rahul Gandhi for Wayanad constituency never stood at 13,37,438. It could be a technical error by Election Commission of India. Hence the claim that 6 lakh votes polled to Rahul Gandhi were deleted is False.
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