A woman from Thrissur, Kerala, has filed a complaint after discovering that nine fake votes were registered using her home address without her knowledge. The matter came to light in flat No. 4C, Capital Village Apartments, Poonkunnam. The flat’s owner, Prasanna, said she is the only person in her household who votes in Thrissur.

Her family includes four adults and two children, but the other adults are registered to vote in their ancestral village, Poochinipadam. She said she learned about the extra names when someone came for voter verification. “We don’t know these people. We’ve lived here for four years. Adding names to our address without consent is wrong,” she said. Prasanna has given a written complaint to the district collector.

According to CPM workers, similar irregularities have been found in other Poonkunnam flats like Water Lily and Capital Village. They alleged that vacant flats were used as fake addresses to shift votes from other districts. They said the fact that property owners have no idea who these people are shows how serious the issue is.

Former Thrissur candidate and CPM leader VS Sunil Kumar claimed the Election Commission allowed large-scale voter list manipulation. He alleged that in one polling booth alone, 280 applications were filed at once, many belonging to people from other constituencies and migrant workers. He said the EC made it easy to misuse the system by accepting postal cards as address proof.

Thrissur was the only Lok Sabha seat in Kerala won by the BJP in 2024, when Suresh Gopi defeated Sunil Kumar of the LDF and K Muraleedharan of the UDF.

Opposition Leader VD Satheesan also called for a full investigation, accusing the BJP of adding votes illegally and threatening free and fair elections. He praised Rahul Gandhi for speaking up and urged people to oppose “fascism, autocracy, and communalism.”