Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Congress, claimed in a press conference that there were numerous instances of vote chori in the Lok Sabha elections and that the BJP and the Election Commission of India were conspiring to steal elections, using Maharashtra as an example.
Rahul Gandhi said the Maharashtra election results validated the party’s belief that the assembly election was stolen from them during a press conference held at Delhi’s Indira Bhawan. “Not giving machine readable voter list convinced us that EC colluded with BJP to ‘steal’ elections in Maharashtra,” he stated.
He has accused the Election Commission of India of acting in collusion with the BJP to promote corrupt voter practices in all the recent Lok Sabha elections. More specifically, he has claimed that these elections have been dance-choreographed to insulate the ruling party from anti-incumbency effects that are likely to manifest much later in the states of Maharashtra, Haryana, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh. Illustrating his point at a press event, Gandhi spoke of mind-blowing discrepancies: more than 100,000 duplicate entries, one crore mystery voters, and all CCTV footage being destroyed. He pointed to the ECI’s reported refusal to release crucial voters’ data as evidence of its intentional suppression.
Specific Cases in Karnataka
Focusing on Karnataka, Gandhi alleged that 40,009 registered voters had fake addresses, including house number 0, that about 4,000 had no photographs attached to them, and some had voted at multiple booths. In Mahadevapura, Bangalore, he claimed to have uncovered over 100250 vote chori instances during their inquiry.
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Official Responses and Contestations
The ECI swiftly rejected these allegations stating that officials should treat them as “baseless allegations” and added that it continued to strive for impartiality and transparency. Meanwhile, some other voices from the opposition have also been raised against the ECI.
For instance, Dipankar Bhattacharya from CPI(ML) criticized ECI for not made public booth level data on voter deletions and called for enhanced transparency in SIR. Gaurav Gogoi of Congress demanded that a set of guidelines be framed for parliamentary discussion on SIR practices as dubious revisions of voter lists were seen in Bihar.
ALSO READ: Rahul Gandhi Alleges 1.5 Lakh Fake Votes, Calls Election Rigged
