Rahul Gandhi Drops “H Bomb” of Voting Fraud in Haryana, ECI Rejects Claims as “Unfounded”

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, Nov 5: Dropping what he called “Hydrogen Bomb” of “major vote theft” by the BJP in collusion with the Election Commission of India (ECI) to win the Assembly elections in Haryana last year, the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday presented “100 Per Cent” proof of voting fraud to the extent of about 25 lakh votes which was rejected by the poll body as “unfounded.”

Alleging at a press conference in Delhi that there were 5.21 lakh duplicate voters in the electoral rolls ahead of the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections, Mr Gandhi accused the ECI of colluding with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah to “destroy” the Indian democracy.

Mr Gandhi claimed that while the Congress lost the Haryana Assembly polls by just about 22,000 votes, his party had found that around 25 lakh votes were stolen in Haryana, which has a total of 2 crore voters. “This means one in eight voters in Haryana are fake, 12.5 per cent,” he said.

Gandhi said several Congress candidates told them after the election that something was wrong. Pointing out that all the exit polls had predicted a Congress victory in the Haryana election, the results when declared threw up a BJP win.

He also showed a video of the chief minister Nayab Singh Saini telling the media before the results that “arrangements” had been made and the BJP is winning the polls. “What were these arrangements? This is two days after the election when every party is saying that the Congress party is sweeping the election. This gentleman is very sure and smiling that the BJP has made arrangements,” Gandhi asked.

Mr Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, alleged that vote theft was happening “not just in constituency level, but at the State and national level.” Thousands of people associated with the BJP voted both in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, he claimed. He said he was also sure that similar manipulation of votes must have been arranged in Bihar as well where polling in two phases are scheduled to be held on November 6 and 11.

Mr Gandhi said “Operation Sarkar Chori” was launched in Haryana to deny the Congress from coming to power. He claimed that despite all exit polls and opinion polls predicting that the Congress was headed towards a landslide win in Haryana, the party lost the elections through a “centralised operation” which allegedly created 25 lakh fake voters.

“The ECI does not want a fair election. This is absolutely clear proof of what the BJP is doing,” said Mr Gandhi. “They (ECI) want to create space. [for fake votes] They are destroying CCTV footage.” The Congress leader alleged that there were 1,24,177 voters with the same photo in Haryana.

But even before Mr Gandhi has completed his presentations, the ECI issued a statement claiming that all the allegations of manipulation of votes in Haryana was “unfounded.” It pointed out that no appeals were filed against the electoral rolls in Haryana and asked “Why were no claims and objections raised by INC’s BLAs during revision to avoid multiple names?” the ECI source said.

Booth-level agents, or BLAs, are appointed by political parties to oversee voting and flag irregularities, if any. The Congress leader alleged that there were 1,24,177 voters with the same photo in Haryana. He alleged that 25 lakh votes were stolen in Haryana through 5.21 lakh duplicate voters, 93,174 invalid voters, and 19.26 lakh bulk voters. Thousands of people associated with the BJP voted both in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, he claimed.

Mr Gandhi pointed out that the Congress lost eight constituencies with very slim margins, including one where it lost by just 32 votes. These margins added up to 22,779. “Congress lost the Haryana election by 22,779 votes, to give you a sense of how close it became,” he said.

Citing an example, Gandhi shared 22 entries in the Haryana voter list with a woman’s photograph. “This is a photograph of a Brazilian model,” he said. “The photograph can be downloaded for free from a website that deals in stock photos.”

The Congress leader said this Brazilian woman’s photo appears 22 times in the voter list under different names, “Sweety, Seema, Saraswati.” “She votes in 10 different booths in Haryana and she has got multiple names. This means this is a centralised operation,” he said.

Citing another case of duplication, he pointed to the 100 voter IDs with the same woman’s photograph in a single Assembly segment. “This lady gets to vote 100 times in Haryana if she feels like. This is to create space so that anybody can vote, so that BJP people can move, come from other states and vote,” Gandhi said. The Congress leader showed another woman’s photograph that appears 223 times in the voter list of two polling booths. “This is the reason the Election Commission destroys CCTV footage of booths,” he alleged.

“The Election Commission can remove duplicates in a second. Why don’t they do it? Reason: they are helping the BJP,” he said, showing several instances of voter IDs with the same pictures but different names in the state’s voter list. Gandhi also claimed that 3.5 lakh entries were deleted from Haryana’s voter list in the run-up to the polls.

He also pointed out that it was perhaps the first time that the postal ballots showed the opposite trend than the results showed. “All polls pointed to a Congress victory in Haryana. The five top exit polls said the Congress is sweeping. The other thing that was surprising was that for the first time in Haryana, the postal votes were different from the result. In postal ballots, Congress got 73 seats while the BJP got 17 seats,” he said. “I am questioning the Election Commission and the democratic process in India, and I am doing this with 100 per cent proof. We are sure that a plan was put in motion to convert Congress’s landslide victory into a loss,” he said.

Asked if the party would seek legal recourse, he said, “The Supreme Court, the highest court of the country, is watching. We are not doing this in a private room” Mr Gandhi called upon Gen Z and the youth to restore democracy through satya (truth) and ahimsa (non-violence).

“This system [vote theft] has been industrialised and we are pretty sure that they will do it in Bihar. You can ask why didn’t you detect then in the voters list of Bihar. That’s because the voters list comes last minute,” Mr Gandhi said.

The Opposition leader also took on Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar’s claim that house number “0” (Zero) is used for homeless people. “Look at the voters’ list where Mr Narender’s house is marked as 0. We physically looked for him in his village and found this as his house,” Mr Gandhi said, showing a two-storeyed house.

Similarly, he showed addresses from the voters list that 501 bulk votes in just one house. In August, Mr Gandhi, citing data from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, claimed that over one lakh votes were “stolen” through manipulation in Mahadevapura Assembly segment in Karnataka. The Election Commission of India had, however, dubbed the charges as “incorrect and baseless” and asserted that no deletion of votes can happen without giving an opportunity of being heard to the affected person.

Sources in the Election Commission questioned what polling agents of the Congress were doing on voting day. “They are supposed to object if the elector has already voted or if they doubt the identity of the elector,” a source said. The source also asked if Rahul Gandhi supports the Special Intensive Revision aimed at removing duplication from voter lists and striking off names of those who have died or moved from a particular constituency.

The source asked how Gandhi could be sure that all these so-called fake voters voted for the BJP. “If (Congress leader) Pawan Khera has names in the voter lists of two states, is he voting twice?” The source also asked why the Congress did not file objections during the SIR in Bihar.

Hitting back at Gandhi, Union Minister Kiren Rijiju said if the Congress has concerns about voter lists, it can approach the Election Commission. “If it does not feel the Election Commission will do justice, it can go to the courts. But it does not trust the system and keeps blaming EVMs and the Election Commission for its failures.”