New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi Thursday alleged the BJP won the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat last year through massive voter list manipulation, a “model” he claimed was replicated across states to deny wins to the Congress and other opposition parties, citing analysis of Election Commission (ECI) data.
The ECI, in its response, asked the Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition to sign a declaration under Rule 20(3)(b) of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, and submit it to the Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka by “this evening itself so that necessary proceedings can be initiated”. Otherwise, it added, he should stop drawing “absurd conclusions and misleading the citizens of India”.
Rahul, addressing a press conference here during which he made a detailed presentation of his findings, claimed that barring Mahadevapura, the Congress had a lead in the remaining assembly segments under the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency. Yet, it lost the seat by a margin of 32,707 votes.
He attributed the party’s loss to alleged voter list manipulation in the Mahadevapura assembly segment, where the BJP had a lead of 1,14,046 votes.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress and the BJP were leading in four assembly segments each. The Congress won five out of eight assembly segments in Bangalore Central in the 2023 Karnataka assembly elections, while the BJP won three.
According to the Congress’s scrutiny of data, as many as 1,00,250 entries in the Mahadevapura voter list were manipulated, helping the BJP win the Bangalore Central seat despite trailing in other segments.
“I think the judiciary needs to get involved in this, and we need to understand that what we love so much, our democracy, doesn’t exist. What is the difference between us and other places? It’s democracy. It’s gone if this is true…I am telling you that this election was lost simply because of this manipulation of the voter list,” Rahul said.
He added that if the ECI does not share machine-readable electronic voter data with the Congress to enable quicker analysis of not just recently-held elections but also those held 10-15 years ago, then “they are partaking in the crime”.
‘One day, the Oppn is going to come to power’
‘“The ECI has to give the people of India this information. If they don’t, there will be consequences for every polling officer—it does not matter how senior or junior you are—involved in this. One day, the Opposition is going to come to power, and you will see what we do to you. Because you are attacking the foundation of what our founding fathers built, and we are not going to allow you, no matter who you are,” he said.
Of the 1,00,250 allegedly bogus entries in the electoral rolls, Rahul said 11,965 were found to be duplicate voters, 40,009 had fake or invalid addresses, 10,452 were bulk voters with similar addresses, 4,132 had invalid photographs, and 33,962 names were added through misuse of Form 6, used to enlist new voters.
The Congress MP claimed manually sifting through lakhs of non-machine-readable papers supplied by the ECI took the Congress’s data analytics team six months. The 11,906 alleged duplicate voters in Mahadevapura were essentially names that appeared multiple times in the voter rolls, he said, citing instances where the names were present in voter lists of other states as well.
He said that of the total voters listed, as many as 40,009 had fake addresses against their names. In many cases, the address section contained entries such as “zero”, “-”, and “#”, as per data shared by the Congress.
The Congress also found 10,452 voters allegedly listed with dubious addresses such as breweries. The addresses of similar single-bedroom dwellings were found against the names of up to 80 voters, raising questions about the integrity of the rolls, said Rahul.
“In one case, as many as 80 voters were found to share one room, and 46 in another. In one instance, 68 voters had a brewery as their residential address,” he added, showing pictures to support his claims. As many as 4,132 voters had invalid or indistinct photographs against their names, according to the Congress’s analysis.
He also flagged alleged misuse of Form 6, used by new voters. “They say new voters vote for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Form 6 is generally used by people aged 18–23 to enlist themselves. We found people aged up to 70, 80 years old registered through Form 6,” he said, citing the example of one Shakuni Rani, aged 70, who registered twice in two months and also voted twice, according to ECI records.
“I want the nation to know that there is a huge criminal fraud being perpetrated on this country. This is being done by the Election Commission and the party in power. It is a crime against the Indian Constitution, the Indian flag. The difference between winning and losing the Haryana election for the Congress was 22,779 votes in the entire state. In one assembly seat in Karnataka, they have stolen four times that. The scale is unbelievable,” Gandhi said.
Incidentally, the BJP has consistently won the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat since its creation in 2009.
‘Take it as an oath’
On the ECI’s response, Rahul said, “I am a politician and what I say to the people is my word. I am saying this publicly to everybody. Take it as an oath. This is Election Commission data. They haven’t denied the information. They are asking, ‘Will you do it under oath?’ Why don’t you say we are wrong? Because they know the truth, and we know they have done this across the country.’”
He said that as long as voter rolls and the ECI remain “compromised”, the debate over whether elections should be held using paper ballots or Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) is immaterial.
When it was pointed out that the Congress had won assembly elections in several states since 2014, when the BJP came to power at the Centre, Rahul said, “This is carried out strategically. We have shown the model, and they can use it wherever they want. They have to build a narrative as well. The point is not whether the BJP is winning or the Congress is losing—the point is that there is 100 percent proof that elections are rigged in India. We are saying the integrity of India’s election system is gone.”
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Mr. Barman, over the last few months, has emerged as a prominent champion of the Gandhi dynasty. His news article clearly show that he passionately believes in whatever Rahul Gandhi and his lackeys – Jairam Ramesh and Mallikarjun Kharge – utter. He comes across as a “committed journalist” desperate to please the Gandhi family and thereby gain acceptance in the elite liberal-secular cabal. This has traditionally been a sure shot way to get a scholarship for “advanced journalism courses” at Columbia University and other such Ivy League institutions.
Good luck to Mr. Barman!
I believe congress has done some fraud in Telangana. They were not in the race. They offered freebie guarantee cards, spreaded a lie that reservations will be removed. This must be investigated too. SIR must be done to prevent illegal voting across the country. Raga is indirectly supporting SIR exercise.