In a no-holds-barred attack on the Election Commission (EC), Congress MP Rahul Gandhi alleged that the poll watchdog was colluding with the BJP to "steal elections" in the country. Addressing a press conference, Gandhi alleged that fake people were being added to voter lists and attempted to validate his point by showing the Karnataka electoral rolls.
The Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha claimed there was "bhayankar chori" (massive theft) of votes in the Mahadevapura assembly segment of Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat.
Responding to the allegations, sources in the Election Commission hit back sharply, saying: "Ya to sign karke dein ya phir Bharat ki janta ko gumrah na karein aur Chunav Aayog par bebuniyaad aarop lagana band karein (Either sign and submit evidence, or stop misleading the people of India and making baseless accusations against the poll body)."
Gandhi claimed that out of 6.5 lakh votes in the Mahadevapura assembly segment, there was a "vote chori" of over 1 lakh votes.
"An internal research by Congress found over one lakh duplicate voters, invalid addresses, bulk voters in Mahadevapura constituency in Karnataka," he said.
Bangalore Central saw a close contest in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
While Congress candidate Mansoor Ali Khan maintained a lead for most of the counting, the final results saw BJP's PC Mohan securing a narrow victory margin of 32,707 votes.
The Congress got 6,26,208 votes while the BJP got 6,58,915. Gandhi pointed out that while the Congress won six out of seven segments, it lost in the Mahadevapura segment, in which it was defeated by 1,14,000 votes.
He claimed there was "vote theft" of 1,00,250 votes, with 11,965 duplicate voters, 40,009 voters with fake and invalid addresses, 10,452 bulk voters or single-address voters, and 4,132 voters with invalid photos. Gandhi also said that 33,692 voters misused Form 6 for new or first-time voters.
SEEKS VOTER DETAILS IN ELECTRONIC FORMAT
The Raebareli MP also cast doubts over the Election Commission not giving the voter lists in electronic format, suggesting that doing so would expose its "fraud" within 30 seconds.
"This is a challenge here. This is seven feet of paper. If I want to find out if you have voted twice or if your name occurs twice in the voter list, I have to take your picture, and then I have to compare it to every single bit of paper. It is a very tedious process," he said.
He further alleged that the poll watchdog was deliberately providing "non-machine-readable papers" to prevent the parties from scrutinising the voter data.
"This task took us six months (Mahadevapura claim). If the Election Commission gave us electronic data, it would take us 30 seconds. Why are we being given data like this? So, that it is not analysed...These papers do not allow for optical character recognition," Gandhi further said.
The allegations come ahead of a massive Congress protest march against the ECI in Karnataka over alleged voter fraud. The march will be led by Gandhi.
The Karnataka state election commission asked Gandhi to submit a signed affidavit of his allegations and questioned why the Congress had not lodged a complaint.
'FAKE PEOPLE BEING ADDED TO VOTER LISTS'
In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress-led INDIA bloc punched above its weight to prevent the BJP from getting a simple majority on its own, limiting it to 240 seats.
The BJP had to depend on its allies to form the government. The Congress ended with 99 seats, with the INDIA bloc bagging 235.
However, in subsequent assembly elections, the Congress saw its electoral fortunes hit a nadir, losing in Haryana, Delhi and Maharashtra.
Gandhi alleged that while every party faces anti-incumbency, the BJP seems to not be affected by it.
"Fake people are being added to the voter list. There has been suspicion among the public based on a couple of points. Anti-incumbency hits every single party in every single democracy, but for some reason, the BJP is the only party in a democratic framework that doesn't suffer from the idea of anti-incumbency," he said.
He also questioned how a majority of exit polls went way off the mark in predicting the results for Haryana and Maharashtra. Several exit polls predicted a win for the Congress in Haryana and gave the Mahayuti an edge in Maharashtra.
"Exit polls, opinion polls say one thing... you saw in the Haryana election, Maharashtra election, and then suddenly the result went in a completely different direction with massive swings," he said.
