rahul-fuels-vote-theft-row-with-newsletter-release

Rahul Gandhi has stepped up his offensive against the Election Commission of India and the Bharatiya Janata Party, accusing both of engineering “vote theft” as he unveiled a new Congress newsletter.

 

The Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, who last month alleged the existence of over one lakh fake voters in Bengaluru’s Mahadevapura constituency, said the newsletter was part of his effort to keep public focus on what he called systemic electoral fraud.

 

“The opposition leader Rahul Gandhi's campaign against ‘vote theft’ is exposing how the Election Commission and BJP are colluding to steal your vote and rigging the elections,” Congress stated in a post on X while announcing the publication. The party said the newsletter also carries highlights from Gandhi’s ‘Vote Adhikaar Yatra’ in Bihar, where he was joined by Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav.

 

Gandhi had described his August 7 press conference, in which he levelled the Mahadevapura charge, as an “atom bomb presser”.

 

Earlier on Sunday, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge sharpened the attack, alleging that the Election Commission had become “BJP’s back-office for vote theft”.

Also read: Rahul vows ‘hydrogen bomb’ expose on 'vote chori'

 

Kharge, sharing a media report on voter deletions in Karnataka’s Aland constituency, questioned the poll body’s decision to withhold details from the public domain. “Is the Election Commission of India (ECI) now the BJP's back office for vote chori? Understand the chronology,” Kharge wrote on X.

 

He went on to cite what he called “a massive deletion” of voters ahead of the Karnataka assembly elections last year. “Thousands of voters were stripped of their rights through a very sophisticated operation of forging Form 7 applications,” he alleged.

 

Kharge further noted that a case filed in February 2023 had led to the detection of 5,994 forged applications. “The probe revealed clear evidence of a massive attempt at voter fraud. The Congress government then ordered a CID probe to catch the culprits,” he said.

 

With Gandhi’s newsletter now amplifying the charge, the opposition appears intent on pressing the issue in Parliament and on the ground, even as the Election Commission has yet to directly respond to the latest accusations.