E-Paper
Rahul Gandhi renews ‘vote theft’ attack
Gandhi said the Karnataka CID wrote 18 times to EC seeking details such as OTP trails and destination ports involved in such deletions but didn't get the info
Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said that there were attempts to delete the names of 6,018 voters in the Aland constituency of Karnataka in December 2022 and add the names of 6,850 “fake voters” in Maharashtra’s Rajura constituency in 2024, alleging that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar was shielding the people behind these attempts.
Speaking at party headquarters Indira Bhawan in Delhi, Gandhi said the Karnataka crime investigation department (CID) wrote 18 times to the Election Commission of India (ECI) seeking details such as OTP trails and destination ports involved in such deletions, adding that “EC has not given it because this will lead us to where the operations are being done.”
He demanded that the CEC give this data within a week. “Otherwise, India’s youth will start believing that CEC is siding with vote thieves.”
In its response, ECI pointed out that it too filed a first information report (FIR) following the unsuccessful attempt, and that the seat was won by the Congress in the May 2023 assembly election. The Congress’s BR Patil won the Aland seat by 10,348 votes, defeating the BJP’s Subhash Guttedar. It also pointed out that voter names can’t be struck off online. “Allegations made by Rahul Gandhi are incorrect and baseless. No deletion of any vote can be done online by any member of the public, as misconceived by Gandhi. No deletion can take place without giving an opportunity of being heard to the affected person,” ECI said in a post on X.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accused Gandhi of making “false allegations” and said the sole agenda of the Congress appeared to be “infiltrators first politics” or protecting the rights of undocumented immigrants.
“Rahul Gandhi’s politics is limited to creating chaos, then playing victim and always trying to delegitimise democracy,” former Union minister Anurag Thakur said.
In his presentation, Gandhi claimed that the deletion process involved people from outside Karnataka, the use of software, huge resources and was done at scale. He sought to extrapolate the Aland attempt as part of a larger conspiracy and alleged that pro-Congress voters, such as people from the Scheduled Castes, minority communities, and tribals have been targeted likewise for over a decade.
Gandhi’s latest presentation is part of his campaign to highlight what he claims are efforts to steal the vote. In his first presentation, on August 7, he claimed there were irregularities in the electoral roll for Bangalore’s Madadevapura constituency. He produced detailed data and claimed that 100,250 “stolen” votes helped the BJP win the seat in 2024, accusing ECI of “colluding” with the ruling BJP.
Gandhi showed that in Mahadevapura, there were 11, 965 duplicate voters, 40,009 voters with fake and invalid address, 10,452 bulk voters who has single address and 4,132 voters with invalid photos.
The Congress has since made vote theft a major issue, and coined the slogan “Vote Chor, Gaddi Chod” (Vote Thief; Quit your post). ECI has denied there was any vote theft but not been able to explain the irregularities highlighted by Gandhi.
Gandhi has also spoken of a “Hydrogen bomb” of an expose that is coming, and on Thursday, prefaced his presentation with the comment that this wasn’t it –– but that it would come in a couple of months.
Gandhi said, it all started when a booth-level officer in Aland found that her uncle’s vote was deleted on the basis of a complaint lodged by her neighbour. “But the neighbour didn’t know anything about it. Some other person deleted it. In Aland, people who filed applications actually didn’t file it. Mobile phones from different states were used for deletion,” Gandhi said.
The Congress brought an Aland resident named Suryakant on stage and played a video of another, Godabai — two complainants who tried to delete the names of voters from the rolls. Both emphasised they had nothing to do with the deletion of voters. Gandhi showed that the first voter in every booth was picked as the complainant — indicating the use of software to file the complaints.
“This is another milestone in how elections are being rigged. These are very strong claims about CEC Gyanesh Kumar. There is solid proof that the CEC is protecting people who are destroying Indian democracy. In every election, some groups have been systematically targeting millions of voters who usually vote for the Opposition: Dalits, Adivasis, minorities.”
The Congress alleged that Suryakant filed 12 deletion forms in 14 minutes and another resident, Nagraj filed two applications in 36 seconds at 4.07 am, an unusual time to file complains.
ECI admitted on Thursday that there had been “unsuccessful attempts” to delete voters in Aland in 2023, and that an FIR was filed by ECI itself to investigate the matter. “In 2023, certain unsuccessful attempts were made for the deletion of electors in the Aland assembly constituency, and an FIR was filed by the authority of ECI itself to investigate the matter,” ECI said, adding that “no deletion of any vote can be done online by any member of the public, as misconceived by Rahul Gandhi.”
Thakur saidGandhi made it a “habit” to level “baseless and incorrect allegations”.
“He does not give an affidavit…does not go to court. The one thing that he has admitted to…he said I am not here to save democracy. He burst the hydrogen bomb on himself,” Thakur said.
”The Congress has lost approximately 90 elections under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi. His frustration is increasing day-by-day,” Thakur said.
He pointed out that the Congress won Aland in 2023. “So, did Congress win that seat through vote chori?” Thakur asked.
In his press briefing, Gandhi added that the Karnataka CID sent 18 letters in 18 months to ECI seeking the destination IP from where these forms were filled, destination ports and the OTP trails. “And EC has not given it because this will lead us to where the operations are being done,” said Gandhi.
“The chief electoral officer (CEO) of Karnataka also demanded information. But no answer. This shows that Gyanesh Kumar is protecting people who are doing this. This is being done in a centralised way, in a scale with large resources. The EC knows who are these people. When EC is not giving information, they are defending murderers of democracy,” Gandhi said.
He also alleged that in the Rajura constituency in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district, 6,850 fake voters were added online with addresses of “Sasti” and names consisting of jumbled works such as “UQjjw”.
The copy of the FIR, displayed during the press conference, showed the first name of an added voter as “YUH UQJJW” and his address as “jwjwhwh, nwjwn, jwjwjwhwhwhw”. Similarly, the address of one of the applicants Prabhakar, address was written as “Sasti, Sasti, Sasti, Sasti, Sasti”. In his August press conference, Gandhi had claimed that thousands of voters have house number as zero.
Later in the day, the Karnataka CEO’s office said 6,018 applications were received in December 2022, out of which only 24 were found genuine and accepted.
“The ERO of Aland received 6,018 applications in Form 7 (for deletion), which were submitted online using various apps such as NVSP, VHA, GARUDA apps during December 2022,” the CEO said in a statement. “Suspecting the genuineness of such a large number of applications submitted online for deletion of electors’ names in 46-Aland LAC in Karnataka, verification of each application was conducted by ERO/AERO/BLOs.”
“Only 24 applications were found to be genuine and another 5,994 were found to be incorrect. Accordingly, 24 applications were accepted and 5,994 incorrect applications were rejected and not deleted.”
The Karnataka CEO further said that the ERO lodged an FIR with the Inspector of Police, Aland police station in Kalaburagi district, based on the inquiry findings in February 2023.
“Based on the instructions given by ECI, the CEO, Karnataka, has handed over to the superintendent of police, Kalaburagi district, on 06.09.2023, all the available information with ECI for completing the investigation,” the statement added.
