Election Commission Slams Rahul Gandhi for Recycling Old Allegations Dismissed by Apex Court

Rahul Gandhi has made the impact once again of what he called an atom bomb of revelations against Election Commission of India (ECI). In an August 7 press conference he alleged that the ECI was in cahoots with the BJP to rig the 2024 Lok Sabha elections by fraud in the Karnataka and Maharashtra voter lists. His magnetic waves of alleged evidence of more than 1,00,250 bogus votes in Mahadevapura form of duplicating voters and false addresses as well as wrong photos. Sadly enough, this jingoistic PowerPoint act proved to be just another damp squib that did not offer much more than the electoral fortunes of his party.

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Gandhi has a well trodden five-step operating manual: Lose election, make baseless excuses, avoid formal complaints, avoid court cases to prove claims and embark on false news leaks and create chaos.

He claimed the instance of a voter with his or her EPIC number cropping up in voter lists in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Lucknow. It was his main evidence of the manipulation of ECI. Fact checking done with the official voter search portal at the ECI was as damaging as a Rahul Gandhi rally. Some fact-checkers in the media could not find any such voter in the voter lists in Lucknow or Maharashtra named by Gandhi. And half an hour later his great conspiracy blew up exposing itself as no more than an effort of a desperate man to draw attention away to his own party drubbing in an attempt to come up with wild and reckless accusations.

In Maharashtra, claims by Rahul Gandhi of voter rallies are as fantastical as 1 crore to 70 lakhs to 40 lakh new voters and they are baseless claims with no real backing. His allegations of vote thieves in Maharashtra had earlier been rubbished by the Bombay High Court in severe terms yet he has not stopped. With the recent comments of the apex court on what Gandhi has said about the Indian Army, his credibility is at its lowest level.

Nevertheless, he goes on deceiving. All his accusations, Rafale to Savarkar, Pegasus to Hindenburg, accusations on the RSS as well as the Chinese to occupy Indian territory, prove to be untrue in a judgment in a court of law.

His hypocrisy is as evident as his failure of becoming an election winner. When Congress wins in such states as Himachal Pradesh or Telagana, ECI is an example of fair play. However, the ECI undermined when it loses. Even the veteran Congress member, Selja Kumari, had to acknowledge the role of the own failure of the party in the Haryana. But Gandhi does not dare to peep inside. His vitriol against the ECI can be traced back to the archaic Congress tendency of demonising Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) -until a few court verdicts cleared their authenticity and now Gandhi is out to frantically hit one more prey: Voter lists.

The most ridiculous thing is that he does not want to prove his statements. The Chief Electoral Officers of Karnataka and Maharashtra have also called upon him to file his allegations under oath which is a requirement of Representation of the People Act, 1951. He said in reply, my word is as good as a sworn affidavit! This is not arrogance but I would say an attempt to avoid responsibility. His allegations were empty and he would have brought these out in the courts of law rather than front the press conferences.

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Gandhi has not only attacked the ECI on baseless grounds but he is also at risk. Imposing the prospect of “serious consequences” in case his demands are not met, he is talking in the language of an Emergency-era tyrant whose dynastic ambition takes precedence over democratic institutions. The tantrums by Gandhi are more of EMI (Emergency Mindset of Indira) than of ECI. It is an indication that he thinks that his Parivar Tantra is superior to Samvidhan Tantra.

But the recent complaints of Gandhi have also unintentionally supported the case of the Special Intensive Revision of the voter lists, also known as SIR, whose use Congress ally Tejashwi Yadav opposes in Bihar.

By accusing fake and duplicate voters of crying foul, Rahul himself goes on to support the cleaning up of the electoral rolls of ECI. Maybe he did not get the memo of his own ally who has in the recent past inadvertently waved two EPIC cards/voter ID out in a press conference, and then went into pretty much the same silence mode when ECI was asking him to give details of his allegations. The point is, why is he so concerned about voter fraud that he will be willing to promote SIR as opposed to bringing down ECI?

Ghalib: Ta umr Ghalib ye bhool karta raha, dhool chehre pe thi, Ghalib aaina saaf karta raha. That is not a problem with the mirror but it is your reality, dear Rahul.

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