Rahul Gandhi: The 40-member social media team of Congress MP and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has made a big claim of 'vote theft' by manipulating the voter list across the country. After this intensive investigation that lasted for 4 months in the office located in Bengaluru, the team has presented shocking figures and evidence. Rahul Gandhi says that the Election Commission can no longer ignore such irregularities.
Congress Flags Election Process Flaws
The Congress' below-expected performance in the recent Lok Sabha elections-defeat in Madhya Pradesh, fewer seats than expected in Telangana, Karnataka, and Bihar, and a crushing defeat in Haryana—led the party to suspect irregularities in the electoral process. The margin of just 22,779 votes between the Congress and the BJP in Haryana, especially in 8 seats, further strengthened the suspicion. The Election Commission had earlier dismissed these allegations due to lack of evidence on EVMs.
Investigation started after complaint
Congress candidate from Bangalore Central and actor-politician Mansoor Ali Khan has told the party high command that his defeat seems suspicious. He had a lead of 82,000 votes in seven assembly constituencies—Saravagnanagar, CV Raman Nagar, Shivajinagar, Shantinagar, Gandhi Nagar, Rajajinagar, and Chamarajpet—but in Mahadevapura, BJP candidate PC Mohan got an unexpected lead of 115,000votes, leading to his defeat.
Rahul Gandhi's 'Herculean task'
After Mansoor Ali Khan's complaint, Rahul Gandhi assigned a 40-member media team to investigate in Bengaluru. Congress asked the Election Commission for an electronic copy of the voter list of Bengaluru Central but was refused. After this, Rahul raised the issue in Parliament, wrote articles, and raised his voice in public meetings.
Finally, the Commission gave a hard copy, which was a pile of papers 20 feet high. After two months, the team got this list, and on scanning it, it was found that it was not compatible with Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The team was forced to prepare the data manually by taking photos of each page, which was completed in four months.
Allegations of vote theft in Mahadevapura
According to the team, a total of 100,250 votes were stolen in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency, which includes-
- 11,965 duplicate votes
- 40,009 votes with fake addresses
- 10,452 votes were registered at the same address.
- 4,132 votes without a photo
- 33,692 votes were fraudulently added through Form-6.
- Many of these 'new voters' were found to be 70, 85, and even 95 years old.
India Alliance Plans Protest Marches
The 'India' alliance is now preparing to take this issue from the streets to the Parliament. On Friday, there will be a march to the Karnataka Election Commission office. On Monday, there will be a foot march to the Election Commission office in Delhi. RJD's padayatra will begin in Patna on September 10, which will conclude with a rally on September 24. There the opposition will jointly make a declaration against the alleged vote theft.
