Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday launched a sharp attack on the Election Commission of India (EC). Gandhi accused EC of colluding with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to “steal elections.” His claims are around Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat where Congress lost by 2.58% in 2024 elections.
In a live presentation, he said EC allowed fake voters and duplicate voting, especially in Mahadevapura, one of the 8 assembly segments under Bangalore Central. The Congress lost the seat to BJP’s PC Mohan by 32,707 votes, with both parties polling over 6 lakh votes.
EC Responds, Karnataka CEO Sends Oath Letter to Rahul Gandhi
The Election Commission swiftly responded to Gandhi’s claims. The Karnataka state chief electoral officer sent an oath letter to Rahul Gandhi, prefilled for him to sign, asking him to submit the evidence he claimed to have. The letter also included a warning about the legal consequences of giving false evidence.
Meanwhile, the BJP had not responded publicly by 3.20 pm on August 7, when this report was last updated.
Gandhi stated that the Congress had expected to win 16 of Karnataka’s 28 seats but ended up securing only nine. “It’s a huge imbalance,” he said, pointing specifically to Mahadevapura where the BJP secured a lead of over 1 lakh votes, offsetting Congress gains elsewhere.
‘One Segment Stolen, With It the LS Election’
He alleged, “We found that 1,00,250 votes were stolen in Mahadevapura,” attributing it to fake entries and misuse of Form 6 meant for new enrolments. Gandhi claimed there were “fake addresses or bulk numbers of voters at one address, and invalid photos too.”
He showed voter rolls to support his claims, including one instance where a man was allegedly registered at four different polling booths. “There were hundreds of such cases,” he said.
In another example, he claimed a man was registered twice in Bangalore Central, and also in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. He also claimed that “68 voters were registered with a beer bar as their address.” According to Gandhi, the Congress party had physically verified these anomalies by visiting such locations, including the brewery.
Allegations Extend to Maharashtra and Haryana
Gandhi extended similar accusations to Maharashtra, where he said, “1 crore new voters appeared between the Lok Sabha elections, in which the Congress and its allies won most of the state’s seats, and the Vidhan Sabha election that they lost.”
“The crux of our argument was that the Maharashtra election was stolen,” he added.
He also cited Haryana, where the Congress performed well in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls but failed in the subsequent state elections. He criticised the EC’s decision not to retain polling-day surveillance footage, calling it “deeply suspicious.”
Concluding his address, Gandhi said, “If they lost just another 25 seats,” the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have been out of power, implying deliberate manipulation. “There was careful managements of the results,” he added.