Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and his deputy Eknath Shinde on Thursday dismissed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s allegations that the 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections were “stolen”, accusing him of spreading falsehoods to mislead the public.
Fadnavis, speaking to reporters near Panaji, said Gandhi’s remarks were baseless and laced with personal attacks. “I feel that, may be, he (Gandhi) should get it (brain) checked,” he said.
“Either his brain has been stolen or a chip in his brain is missing. That is why he is making such statements often,” PTI quoted Fadnavis as saying.
The Maharashtra chief minister was in Goa to attend an event as the chief guest.
Meanwhile, in an interview with PTI, deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde said, “With his false allegations, Rahul Gandhi is trying to create a perception, but it won't be accepted by the people.”
Their remarks came after Gandhi, addressing reporters at the AICC headquarters in New Delhi, claimed that the Maharashtra election results confirmed the Congress party’s suspicion that the polls had been manipulated.
“Not giving machine-readable voter list convinced us that the Election Commission (EC) colluded with BJP to ‘steal’ elections in Maharashtra,” alleged the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
{{/usCountry}}“Not giving machine-readable voter list convinced us that the Election Commission (EC) colluded with BJP to ‘steal’ elections in Maharashtra,” alleged the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
{{/usCountry}}He further said, “They said we are going to destroy the CCTV footage. This was surprising to us because there was a question in Maharashtra about a massive voting after 5.30 pm for the numbers to add up. Our people knew that in the polling booths, no such thing happened. There was no massive voting after 5.30 pm.”
“These two things made us believe with reasonable certainty that the Election Commission of India was colluding with the BJP to steal elections,” Gandhi added.
The BJP-led Mahayuti alliance had secured a sweeping victory in the November 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections, winning 230 of the 288 seats.
The BJP alone bagged 132, followed by allies Shiv Sena and NCP with 57 and 41 seats, respectively. In contrast, the Congress-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) performed poorly, with Congress winning only 16 seats, Sharad Pawar’s NCP (SP) 10, and Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) 20.
Gandhi also alleged irregularities in the voter list in Karnataka, claiming a “vote chori” of over 1,00,000 votes in one constituency. He cited 11,965 duplicate entries, 40,009 fake or invalid addresses, 10,452 single-address voters, 4,132 invalid photos, and 33,692 instances of misuse of Form 6.
In response, the Karnataka chief electoral officer asked Gandhi to submit a signed declaration with the names of the allegedly excluded or ineligible voters.
Gandhi replied, “What I say to the people is my word. Take it as an oath. This is their (EC) data, and we are displaying their data.”
With PTI inputs