Rahul alleges ‘organised vote theft’, accuses ECI of colluding with BJP to manipulate polls

New Delhi, Aug 7 (UNI) Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, once again slammed the Election Commission today accusing the poll body of ”colluding” with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to ”manipulate” the election results and shield the party from anti-incumbency.

Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters here, Gandhi said the “foundational principle of the Indian Constitution—one person one vote—is under threat,” raising serious concerns about the integrity of the country’s electoral process.

“Are the right people being allowed to vote? Are fake people being added to the voter list? Is the voter list accurate?” Gandhi asked, asserting that systemic tampering with electoral rolls may be influencing results.

The Congress leader highlighted a growing sense of distrust among the public, citing several issues that he claimed are eroding the credibility of the electoral process.

He claimed that despite facing prolonged governance fatigue, the BJP continues to win elections with little resistance. He also pointed to repeated instances of unexpectedly large margins in BJP victories as a red flag.

Moreover, he questioned why major poll predictions consistently miss the mark, often underestimating BJP’s performance.

The Congress leader accused sections of the media of creating a choreographed narrative favourable to the ruling party and raised doubts about the sequencing and timing of elections, implying they are strategically designed to benefit the BJP.

“There is a general sense among millions of Indians that something is off,” Gandhi said, calling for a thorough investigation into the electoral machinery and greater transparency from the Election Commission.

He accused the Election Commission and the BJP of being complicit in what he described as “organised vote theft” in the Mahadevapura assembly segment, in the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency in the 2024 general elections.

Citing “internal party data and figures” sourced from the Election Commission, Gandhi said “Our internal polls indicated that we were expected to win 16 seats in Karnataka.

However, we won only 9. We then focused on the 7 unexpected losses and chose Mahadevapura for a closer look. All the data we have is from the 2024 elections, sourced directly from the Election Commission.”
He said ”in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP secured 6,58,915 votes, winning with a margin of 32,707. However, in the Mahadevapura assembly segment, the Congress received 1,15,586 votes, whereas the BJP garnered 2,29,632 votes.

The Congress won all the Vidhan Sabhas except this one, where the BJP swept and secured a margin of 1,14,046 votes. This seat significantly contributed to their election win, and the Lok Sabha result went in their favour”.

“This discrepancy is a huge imbalance. So, we started examining the details and discovered that approximately 1,00,250 votes were stolen out of 6,50,000 total votes in the Mahadevapura assembly.”
According to Gandhi, the breakdown of the alleged “vote chori” were duplicate voters: 11,965 entries; fake and invalid addresses: 40,009 voters; bulk registrations at single addresses: 10,452 cases; invalid photographs on voter IDs: 4,132 entries and misuse of Form 6: 33,692 cases.

He also raised fresh concerns over the integrity of the electoral process in Maharashtra and Haryana, alleging serious anomalies in voter registration and turnout patterns during the recent state assembly elections.

Gandhi pointed to what he described as “clear and visible” irregularities that he believes undermined the democratic process.

“Before Maharashtra, we weren’t able to articulate the reason and logic behind our suspicion.

But in Haryana and Maharashtra, we saw it right in front of us.”
Gandhi claimed that more voters were added to the electoral rolls in Maharashtra in just five months than had been added over the past five years, calling the spike “staggering” and “statistically abnormal.”
He also alleged that in some areas, the number of new voters exceeded the total population, raising questions about the authenticity of the additions.

Another red flag, according to Gandhi, was a sudden surge in voter turnout after 5 PM on polling day — a pattern he described as “highly unusual” and suggestive of possible tampering.

Our alliance, which had swept the Lok Sabha elections just a few months earlier, was suddenly wiped out in the Vidhan Sabha elections. The swing was inexplicable and deeply suspicious,” he said.