ThiruvananthapuramAugust 24, 2025 07:53 PM IST
First published on: Aug 24, 2025 at 07:53 PM IST
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As the Congress looks to make “vote theft” allegations against the BJP stick in Karnataka and raise doubts about the role of the Election Commission (EC), a BJP leader’s remarks in neighbouring Kerala appear to have opened up the chance for the Opposition party to question the election of Suresh Gopi from Thrissur in the Lok Sabha polls last year. Gopi, a Union Minister of State, is the first-ever BJP MP from the southern state.
“In seats where we have chances of winning, we will bring in people from Jammu and Kashmir, lodge them (here) for a year and see to it that they vote. We will do it in the future too. If a person in Jammu and Kashmir, who wants to see my victory … comes here and stays for a year to vote for me, what is unethical in it? ” BJP state vice-president B Gopalakrishnan told the media on Friday, sparking a row.
Following this comment, the Congress alleged that the BJP had enrolled 60,000-odd fake voters to ensure Gopi’s victory and demanded that a case be registered against him for allegedly submitting a false declaration that he had stayed in the constituency for six months, which is a requirement to be included in the voter list.
While the turnout in the constituency was 74%, down from 78% five years earlier, Gopi’s victory margin was over 74,000 votes. Asked about voters with fake addresses allegedly being part of the electoral rolls, Gopalakrishnan claimed there might be a “one-off case”.
“No house owner from Thrissur has come up with such a complaint. Over 1 lakh Congress supporters switched to the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls, due to which the Congress’s votes came down to 3.27 lakh from 4.16 lakh in 2019. Where have these votes gone? The Congress needs to answer this,” he said.
The Congress said it was now examining electoral rolls to “identify the fake voters added by the BJP” in last year’s polls. “So far, we have examined 37 of the 1,200-odd booths. When we compare the voter lists of 2024 and the new one released ahead of the upcoming local body elections, there are many names missing. We have found around 20-30 names missing from each booth. These voters were brought in for the Lok Sabha elections and may have returned to their real addresses for the local body polls,” alleged the party’s Thrissur district president Joseph Tajet.
The Congress also alleged that the District Election Officer had declined to furnish the details of documents that new voters had furnished to be included in the electoral rolls for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. “The district administration has refused to provide details and given a strange response that they cannot be provided as they are physical assets in the CEO’s (Chief Electoral Officer) IT application data bank,” said former Congress MLA Anil Akkara, who sought the details through an RTI application.
Akkara alleged the ruling CPI(M)’s “involvement” in the matter. “The BJP and Gopi did not want to make the documents public, but why is the state government thinking on the same lines? Why should the district administration stand as an obstacle in the BJP fake-voter issue? It just shows that the CPI(M) government was complicit in enrolling fake voters,” he said.