The Congress’s “vote chori” pitch may not have found many takers in Bihar, but the party is making another push for the campaign on Sunday as it holds a “Vote Chor, Gaddi Chhod” rally at Delhi’s iconic Ramlila Maidan.
The rally, which will see participation of Congress leaders from across the country including Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, party president Mallikarjun Kharge, general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra among others, is the first such event in the national capital against the Congress’s “vote chori” claims.
The announcement of Sunday’s rally came on November 18, days after the Bihar Assembly elections where the Congress faced a humiliating defeat, after a meeting of the party high command with leaders from the 12 states and UTs where the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls is underway. After the meeting, Congress general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal said the party was going to hit the streets and “expose” the Election Commission’s “campaign to destroy democracy in the country”.
The slogan “vote chor, gaddi chhod” became a battle cry for Rahul Gandhi during his “Voter Adhikar Yatra” in Bihar in the run-up to the Assembly polls.
Despite winning just six out of 61 seats it contested in the state, the party has continued with the slogan and the campaign against “vote chori”.
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Since the November 18 announcement, the Congress leadership in states, especially those near Delhi, have been working round-the-clock to ensure a good turnout for Sunday’s rally. A control room has been set up at the party’s Akbar Road office in Delhi, and Congress leaders in UP, Haryana, Bihar, Punjab and other states have been working overtime to ensure that the rally is a huge success.
Party leaders say the issue of “vote chori” is very close to Gandhi and he is hopeful that in the future it will see a “mass movement”. The LoP has so far done three press conferences and given details of what he calls “vote chori” being carried out on a nationwide scale by the EC “in collusion with the BJP”.
Gandhi’s allegations against the EC began after the Assembly elections in Maharashtra in November last year, where he alleged that the total electors in the state had seen a sizeable jump between 2024 Lok Sabha polls in April-May and Assembly elections in November. He alleged that most voters were added in the 85 constituencies where the BJP had not done well in the Lok Sabha polls.
Then, came the three press conferences where Gandhi gave “evidence of vote chori” in different parts of the country. The first press conference was on August 7, when Gandhi accused the EC and the BJP of perpetrating “a huge criminal fraud” in elections. He shared findings of a Congress investigation in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency — a part of Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat in Karnataka — and alleged that votes were “stolen” in multiple ways.
In his second press conference on September 18, Gandhi accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of protecting “vote chors” and cited data from two Assembly seats — one in Karnataka and another in Maharashtra — to allege irregularities in electoral rolls. The poll panel had dismissed the allegations as “incorrect and baseless”.
The last press conference was held on November 5, when Gandhi alleged that the Assembly elections in Haryana last year in which his party was defeated had been “stolen”, and 25 lakh fake votes had been cast in the state.
The last time the Congress hit the streets of Delhi against the EC was against the Bihar SIR on August 11, when MPs including Gandhi, Kharge and Vadra, took out a march from Parliament House to the Election Commission office. Several leaders of the INDIA bloc had participated in the march.
This time, the Congress has decided to go solo in its protest against the SIR exercise and “vote chori”. The reason for this, party leaders said, was uncertainty over the participation of the allies in the rally after the Bihar poll debacle.
If Bihar was the litmus test for the Congress’s “vote chori” campaign, the Delhi rally might be a good moment to show how serious the party is about the issue. Those in the know of things say Gandhi is not giving up the campaign despite the Bihar loss.
“He (Gandhi) feels that the issue pertains to the most basic element of democracy – voting. And he will continue his offensive against the EC and BJP. We hope for an awakening of the masses on this issue,” said a senior Congress leader.
With elections approaching in Assam, Kerala, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, a lot rides on how the Congress’s “vote chori” campaign fares in these states.
The party’s fortunes in West Bengal may not be the most crucial with INDIA bloc ally TMC being in the fray; in Tamil Nadu it would hope for a good showing with its ally DMK. In Assam and Kerala, the party has a bigger role as it is the main player. These elections are likely to decide the fate of Gandhi’s spirited campaign against “vote chori”.