Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi is set to make yet another “big revelation” on his allegations of “vote chori”. Here is a look at previous instances when he held press conferences to “expose” the Election Commission (EC), and the claims he made.
On August 7, Gandhi accused the EC and the BJP of perpetrating “a huge criminal fraud” in elections. Presenting what he described as findings of a Congress investigation in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency — part of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat in Karnataka — he alleged that votes were “stolen” in multiple ways.
At a media briefing at the AICC headquarters, he said the Congress had won all Assembly segments in Bangalore Central except Mahadevapura and lost the parliamentary seat by 1,14,046 votes. “We started looking at this number. Why does this imbalance come from one seat? We found that 1,00,250 votes were stolen out of a total of 6.5 lakh,” he said.
According to Gandhi, these votes were “stolen in five ways” — through duplicate voters, fake and invalid addresses, bulk voters at a single address, invalid photos, and misuse of Form 6, used for enrolling first-time voters. The Congress analysis, he said, found 11,965 duplicate votes, 40,009 fake or invalid addresses, 10,452 bulk voters using the same address, 4,132 invalid photos, and 33,692 instances of Form 6 misuse.
He displayed voter lists showing a person identified as Aditya Srivastava, claiming the same individual was registered in polling booths in Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra. “This is not an isolated case. There are thousands like this in one Assembly segment,” he said.
On Form 6 misuse, Gandhi said a 70-year-old woman, Shakun Rani, was registered twice within two months and voted in two different booths. “There are 33,692 such cases. These supposed new voters are mostly old, registered multiple times,” he alleged.
He claimed the manipulation was not limited to one Assembly segment. “We have studied the pattern and are convinced this crime is being committed on a massive scale across states,” he said, adding that this explained why “exit polls and internal surveys go massively wrong”.
Gandhi accused the EC of colluding with the BJP by refusing to share machine-readable voter lists and disallowing scrutiny of CCTV footage. “The EC is destroying evidence of vote theft across the country,” he alleged. He said the difference between the BJP and Congress in the Haryana Assembly polls last year was just 22,779 votes, claiming a “pattern” where the BJP sweeps some seats with “abnormal margins” while others show natural competition. “The Prime Minister became PM because of 25 seats,” he said, alleging the EC was “destroying the election system”.
On September 18, Gandhi levelled fresh allegations, this time focusing on large-scale additions and deletions of votes. He claimed that voters — particularly from Opposition-supporting communities such as Dalits, Adivasis, minorities, and OBCs — were being systematically targeted and their names deleted.
He accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of protecting “vote chors” and “those killing democracy”. “This is not something I say lightly. I am the LoP in the Lok Sabha. I have solid proof in black and white that the CEC is protecting people who have destroyed Indian democracy,” he said.
Gandhi said his latest revelations were meant to show the youth “how elections are being rigged”. But he added that this was not the “hydrogen bomb” of revelations he had promised. “That will come soon,” he said. “In election after election, millions of voters are being systematically deleted across India. We have 100 per cent proof,” he asserted.
The EC dismissed the allegations as “incorrect and baseless”, stating that no vote can be deleted online by any member of the public and that no deletion occurs without giving the affected person a hearing. Citing Karnataka’s Aland Assembly constituency, it said that in 2023 “unsuccessful attempts” were made to delete votes, after which an FIR was filed by the Commission itself. “As per records, Aland was won by Subhadh Guttedar (BJP) in 2018 and by B R Patil (INC) in 2023,” the EC said.
Gandhi cited Aland as evidence of a nationwide pattern of “vote deletion”, claiming that someone had attempted to delete 6,018 votes from booths with strong Congress presence. “We don’t know the total number of deletions, but by coincidence, 6,018 were caught,” he said. He also shared a list of mobile phone numbers allegedly used for these deletions in Karnataka, claiming they originated from outside the state. “Whose numbers are these? Who operated them? Who generated the OTPs?” he asked.
He said the manipulation was being carried out “not by individuals, but through software”. According to him, the top 10 booths with the most deletions in Aland were Congress strongholds, eight of which the party had won in 2018. “This is a planned operation,” he said.
Citing an ongoing probe by the Karnataka Police’s Crime Investigation Department (CID) that began in February 2023, Gandhi said the EC had failed to share key data sought by investigators. “The CID has written 18 letters in 18 months asking for three simple things — the destination IPs from which forms were filed, the device ports used, and the OTP trails. Yet, the EC hasn’t responded,” he said.
He also cited Maharashtra’s Rajura constituency, alleging 6,850 fake online additions were made using automated software. “The Chief Election Commissioner must stop protecting people destroying Indian democracy. The EC has to release this data — the phone numbers, OTPs, and device logs — within a week. Otherwise, it will prove that Gyanesh Kumar is shielding those responsible,” Gandhi said.
He further claimed that insiders within the EC had started sharing information with the Congress. “Information is now coming from within the Election Commission. This won’t stop, and it can’t be stopped. Once the people know about this vote chori, they won’t allow it to continue,” he said.