Rahul Gandhi, during a press conference at Indira Bhawan this afternoon, alleged that the Election Commission colluded with the BJP to manipulate the electoral process, accusing them of orchestrating what he described as “Vote Chori” (vote theft). He outlined five methods allegedly used to rig the voter rolls in Bengaluru’s Mahadevapura constituency. According to the Congress leader, there were 11,965 duplicate voters, over 40,000 fake or invalid addresses, nearly 10,500 bulk voters registered at single addresses, just over 4,000 invalid photographs, and around 33,692 instances of Form 6 misuse.
In the Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha election in 2024, PC Mohan of the BJP defeated Congress’s Mansoor Ali Khan by 32,707 votes. In the Mahadevapura Assembly Constituency, Congress received 1,15,586 votes, whereas BJP received 2,29,632 votes – a margin of 1,14,046 votes.
“Out of over six lakh total votes, over one lakh votes were stolen,” Rahul Gandhi said.
7-foot-high stack of documents
He said that he got his hands on this data after his team analysed a 7-foot-high stack of documents. The Election Commission, he said, provided non-machine-readable papers, and that his team went through lakhs of entries manually.
Rahul Gandhi said that the party’s internal polls indicated that they were winning 16 Lok Sabha seats, but they won only 9 when the results were declared. This discrepancy prompted them to launch their own investigation into potential electoral irregularities. He explained that his team chose to examine one Lok Sabha constituency, narrowing their analysis to a single Vidhan Sabha segment, Mahadevapura, because Congress had won all other Vidhan Sabha segments in that Lok Sabha seat except for this one.
In Mahadevapura, Congress received 1.1 lakh seats, while the BJP secured 2.2 lakh seats. There was a huge margin of 1.1 lakh. “It’s a huge imbalance, so we started looking into the details,” Rahul Gandhi said in the press conference.
Duplicate voters
According to Rahul Gandhi, his team identified 11,965 duplicate voters. These voters appear multiple times on voter lists. He cited the example of Gurkirat Singh Dang, who appeared four times in four different polling booths.
Another case he mentioned involved a voter named Aditya Srivastava, who allegedly appeared on voting lists in Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh. “This is the gentleman called Aditya Srivastava. His name was on four different voting lists.”
Fake addresses
Next, he said, were fake addresses that the team found on the voter list. In this, either the address doesn’t exist, or it’s 0, or the address can’t be verified for over 40,000 voters.
He then shared multiple instances where the house numbers were listed as “0” for many voters. What’s more, he highlighted entries where the father’s name field contained random combinations of letters. For one, it was “Ilsdfhug”, for the other it was “Dfoigoidf”.
Bulk voters with a single address
Rahul Gandhi further highlighted the curious case of bulk voters living at the same address, adding that his team identified over 10,452 voters.
“House number 35. 80 voters live in this house. We sent people to check, they got beaten up,” he claimed while displaying the voter list for booth number 470, which showed all 80 individuals listed under the same residential address.
Rahul Gandhi cited another unusual case where 46 people were registered as living in a single one-bedroom house. “When we went there, there was no sign of their existence. Our people were threatened.” This was booth number 366.
As bizarre as it gets, per Rahul Gandhi, he claimed that 68 people were registered at the address of a brewery. “When we go and ask them where these people are, who are these people, nothing. We don’t know, never heard of them.” The listed address was 153 Beer Club.
Invalid photos
Rahul Gandhi identified invalid voter photographs as another method of what he called “vote chori”. He said that 4,132 entries either had indistinguishable photos, missing photos, or photos that were too small to identify the voter.
Misuse of Form 6
He called the misuse of Form 6 the most interesting and telling sign of manipulation, stating, “This is the most interesting thing, where the game is played. You must’ve heard that new voters, young voters, like to vote for the Prime Minister. I’ll show you how,” he said as he proceeded to demonstrate how the form was allegedly exploited. A total of 33,692 voters were registered through Form 6.
He highlighted the case of Shakun Rani, a 70-year-old woman who allegedly appeared twice on the voter list. In one entry, her name was listed as “Shakun” with “Rani” as the surname. In the second entry, she appeared as “Shakun Rani” with no surname. Additionally, the second entry featured a zoomed-out photograph of hers.
“This is now suddenly a new voter. And then, the beautiful thing is, she actually votes twice or somebody else votes twice for her,” he added.
He also alleged that the so-called new voters added through Form 6 were mostly in their 80s and 90s, and none were between the ages of 18 and 25, further raising questions about the legitimacy of the additions.
Rahul Gandhi alleged that out of over six lakh registered voters, nearly one lakh votes were “stolen”. He presented this as a key indicator of large-scale electoral manipulation.
Towards the end of his presentation, the slide read, “BJP won 25 Lok Sabha seats with a margin of less than 33,000 votes. PM Modi only needed to steal 25 seats to stay in power in 2024. This is why EC is not giving us digital voter rolls.”
“You’re not in the business of destroying Indian democracy, you’re in the business of protecting it,” he said, addressing the Election Commission.
He further alleged that CCTV footage and the voter rolls now constitute evidence in a crime, accusing the Election Commission of attempting to destroy or tamper with that evidence.