Over 100K votes ‘stolen’: Rahul; EC demands signed declaration

Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Thursday made a presentation that he claimed proved there were 100,250 “stolen” votes in the Mahadevapura assembly segment of Bangalore (Central) Parliamentary constituency that helped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win the seat in 2024, accusing the Election Commission of India of “colluding” with the ruling party.

- Saubhadra Chatterji

His presentation, which also included names of the voters involved, prompted an immediate reaction from the Election Commission (EC), which asked him to send a signed declaration and oath to the effect.

Claiming that a team of 40 people spent six months going through the physical electoral rolls given by the Commission that were seven feet thick in all, and presented in a non machine-readable format, Gandhi provided a breakup of the “stolen” votes: 11, 965 duplicate voters, 40,009 voters with fake and invalid address, 10,452 voters who were part of groups of 60 or 70 voters with the same address; 4,132 voters with invalid photos; and 3, 692 voters who used Form 6. The last is primarily meant for new and first-time voters who do not find their names on the rolls, but Gandhi claimed many of those using this form were 95, 96, and 98 years old.

In 2024, the BJP won the Bangalore Central seat by 32,707 votes. Gandhi claimed that while in all other assembly segments of the Lok Sabha constituency, the Congress maintained a lead, it lost the seat as the BJP managed a lead of 114,000 votes in the Mahadevapura segment.

Gandhi lashed out at the apex poll body and said, “EC was colluding with the BJP to steal elections.

In one assembly segment, 100,250-vote theft took place. This is the reason why EC doesn't give us data machine-readable data.”

The presentation came ahead of the Congress’ rally on the issue in Karnataka. Gandhi claimed that the BJP won the 2024 election narrowly. The Prime Minister is the PM with a slender majority and needed to “steal” only 25 seats to stay in power, he added.

The BJP won 240 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections to the opposition INDIA bloc’s 234; it formed the government with the support of its allies such as the Janata Dal United), Telugu Desam Party, and Shiv Sena.