Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has released a video on his X handle to further push his allegations that the Election Commission (EC) and the BJP “colluded to steal votes”.
He accused the EC of “treason”, and cited Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh as instances to support his charge, adding to Maharashtra, Haryana and Karnataka that he spoke about.
He also spoke pointedly of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls in Bihar, due for polls in October-November. “That's institutional theft. The EC wants to help the BJP, clearly, by recasting the electoral rolls,” he said.
“Vote chori (theft) is not just an electoral scam; it is a major betrayal committed against the Constitution and democracy. Let the nation's culprits hear this: times will change, punishment will surely be meted out,” his post, in Hindi, said, a day after he held a livecast in which he made a presentation detailing the allegations.
The Election Commission has already asked him to share under oath what he called evidence.
“My word is an oath,” Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, retorted on Thursday. Asking the EC to check its own data, he said, “I have said everything in public. And I have cited EC's data.”
He showed what he termed examples of thousands of fake votes, registered without real addresses or in bulk at one; and people having votes multiple times. Bangalore Central Lok Sabha segment was illustrative of this, he claimed.
In the video on Friday morning, he said he was born in a political family. His sister Priyanka, who is a Lok Sabha member like him, and he used to prepare election posters at home back in 1980, he recalled, speaking in Hindi.
“I understand the election process deeply — polling booths, voter lists, all of it,” he said.
He reiterated that his party and he had suspicions for a while: “The mood would be one way, and election results would go the other way.” He went on to cite the 2022 assembly elections of Uttarakhand, and the polls in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh held in 2023.
“I saw clearly; there was terrifying anti-incumbency (against the BJP) in Madhya Pradesh during my Bharat Jodo Yatra. Yet, we got just 65 seats (of 234) — impossible!” he said.
He spoke pointedly of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls in Bihar, which is due for polls in October-November. “That's institutional theft. The EC wants to help the BJP, clearly, by recasting the electoral rolls,” he said.
“So far we have only investigated the addition of votes. We will next probe the deletions too,” he said.
A BJP-JDU alliance under Nitish Kumar is seeking another term in Bihar, while the Congress, RJD and other INDIA bloc parties have been opposing the SIR.
The SIR process is also under judicial scrutiny for it seeks citizenship proof among several other documents that the depressed classes, in particular, arguably may not have. Opposition parties have alleged that it's the BJP's backdoor method of taking away the citizenship of Muslims, Dalits and backward communities.
In his video, Rahul Gandhi mentioned “poor people” as those who will be affected by the SIR.
“This is treason. There will come a time when we will catch you,” he said, addressing EC and its officials.
The BJP has already dismissed Gandhi's allegations as marks of his frustration at poll losses.
