Rahul Gandhi Hits Back at Election Commission Over Vote Theft Allegations

Rahul Gandhi Hits Back at Election Commission Over Vote Theft: Rahul Gandhi on Friday went all out against the Election Commission for the first time - over allegations of massive voter fraud with the BJP - and issued a veiled threat; "Think twice before attacking the Constitution. We will catch you, one by one. It will take time. But we will..."

"The Election Commission needs to understand one thing... if you don't provide us with data (i.e., voter lists and poll booth video recordings over the past decade)... you cannot hide," he raged in Bengaluru.

"Yesterday we proved, 100 per cent, the Election Commission and the BJP committed theft of votes..." the Congress MP said this afternoon at a city rally, "One day, you will face the opposition."

The ECI, sources said, asked the Congress MP to sign the declaration by Chief Electoral Officers of Maharashtra and Karnataka or apologise for his “ridiculous” allegations.

Rahul Gandhi also said the Election Commission websites of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar are down.

“Today, when the people of the country are asking questions about our data, the Election Commission has shut down its website. The Election Commission knows that if the public starts questioning them, their entire structure will collapse,” Rahul Gandhi added.

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Earlier on Friday, Election Commission sources said if the Congress leader believes in his analysis and feels his allegations against the EC are true, he should have “no problem” in signing the declaration under electoral rules and submit names wrongfully added or removed from voters’ list, PTI reported.

At a press conference in Delhi, Rahul Gandhi said on Thursday that there was “vote chori” of 1,00,250 votes in a Karnataka constituency, 11,965 duplicate voters in the segment, 40,009 voters with fake and invalid addresses, 10,452 bulk voters or single address voters, 4,132 voters with invalid photos and 33,692 voters misusing Form 6 of new voters.

He claimed the “vote chori model” was being used in many constituencies across the country and the judiciary should get involved because “the democracy we love so much, doesn’t exist anymore”.

Gandhi said his party analysed voter data from 2024 Lok Sabha polls for the Mahadevapura assembly segment in the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency.

"Our internal polls indicated that we were expected to win 16 seats in Karnataka (in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections). However, we won nine. We then focused on the seven unexpected losses and chose the Mahadevapura Vidhan Sabha constituency. All the data we have here is from the 2024 elections, sourced from the Election Commission," he said.

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Gandhi cited that in 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP got 6,58,915 votes in the Bangalore Central seat and won by 32,707. “In Mahadevapura assembly segment, Congress got 1,15,586 votes, BJP got 2,29,632.

"The Congress won all the Vidhan Sabhas except Mahadevapura, where the BJP swept and secured a victory margin of 1,14,046 votes. This seat significantly contributed to their election win, and the Lok Sabha result went in their favour on that seat," he said. "This discrepancy is a huge imbalance. So, we started examining the details and discovered that approximately 1,00,250 votes were stolen in the Mahadevapura assembly," he claimed.

Under the ‘duplicate voter’ header, Gandhi said 11,965 such voters were found in the Mahadevapura segment.

He cited Gurkeerat Singh Dang was on the voters’ list four times at four different booths. The former Congress chief also cited the example of a person named Aditya Srivastava being registered as a voter in three states.

Gandhi said Narendra Modi became the PM because of 25 Lok Sabha seats.

He repeated his charge of fake voters being added before the Maharashtra assembly elections and said more voters were added in the five months before the polls than in the last five years.

"Maharashtra, we weren't able to tell the logic behind it. In Maharashtra and Haryana, we saw it right in front of our faces. We said publicly and told the EC that more voters were added in five months than in five years in Maharashtra. More voters than the entire population of Maharashtra," Rahul Gandhi said.

"Huge jump in voter turnout after 5 pm. Our alliance got wiped out while the alliance swept in the Lok Sabha. At the state level, between Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha, one crore voters came in," he added.

Further, the former Congress president said: "In the (2024) Lok Sabha election, our alliance wins. But after 4 months, the BJP wins the Maharashtra Assembly election. It was a surprising election result. When we tried to find out, we learnt that 1 crore new voters cast their votes; 1 crore new voters who had never voted in the LS polls voted in the assembly election in Maharashtra."

The Congress leader said these new votes went to the BJP, so it’s “wrongdoings”.

"Wherever these new voters cast their votes, the BJP won. The votes of our alliance did not reduce and we got exactly the same number of votes we had in the Lok Sabha election. The new voters went to the BJP in the Assembly election," he added.

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