Opposition Questions ECI’s Powers to Conduct SIR in an Entire State, Rahul Gandhi Accuses BJP of Taking away “Right to Vote”
Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Dec 9: The leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi while acknowledging the need for electoral reforms accused the RSS and the BJP of trying to attack the right to vote, which he said was an “anti-national” act.
Participating in the debate on the electoral reforms in reference to the “Special Intensive Revision” (SIR) of the electoral rolls in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, Mr Gandhi said, “There is no bigger anti-national act than ‘vote chori’,” hitting back at the BJP and other critics who routinely lobby the phrase ‘anti-national’ – most recently in the ‘Vande Mataram’ row Monday – at the Congress and him.
He also cautioned the ruling party that when the Congress and other non-BJP parties returned to power, they would “change the law retrospectively, and we will come looking for you.” He also spelled out what he felt were necessary elements of electoral reform, and accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of not responding to any concern raised by the Opposition. He said the ECI had been “captured” by the government.
Mr Gandhi took aim at the BJP Tuesday afternoon, reminding the ruling party of a controversial episode from last month – a Brazilian woman’s photograph appeared against 22 names in Haryana’s voter list – and accusing it of colluding with the Election Commission to commit ‘vote chori’ in recent state and federal poll, including in Bihar.
“I will ask three questions – first, why is it that the CJI (Chief Justice of India) was removed from the selection panel of the EC? I am there, but I have no voice in the room. Why are they so keen on choosing exactly who the EC will be,” Gandhi said, adding, “In 2023, they changed the law to ensure no EC could be punished for any action taken while in that position.” The Congress leader added that no government had done so in the past.
“Finally, why was the rule with regards to CCTV and the data they contain changed? Why was it allowed for the EC to destroy the footage after 45 days (of the results)?” Gandhi wondered, referring to a new rule that was brought out on May 30, 2025.
Electoral reforms are “very simple”, he said, but charged that the government did not want them. Gandhi offered his prescription: “One, give the whole voters’ list to all parties one month before the election. Two, don’t destroy CCTV footage. Third, give us access to EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines) to see what their architecture is. Four, don’t allow the EC to get away with everything.”
“A Brazilian woman appeared 22 times in Haryana voter lists… another woman’s name appeared 200 times. The Haryana election was stolen. I have said this again and again and again… but nowhere has the Election Commission answered my questions.”
“The EC hasn’t told me why lakhs of duplicate voters exist. The EC has no answers to these questions. Why, after the SIR in Bihar, were there 1.2 lakh duplicate voters? It is very clear you have captured the institution. I have shown how the EC is doing things completely out of line.”
“Why was the Chief Justice of India removed the panel that selects the Election Commissioners? Do we not believe in the Chief Justice? Why was he not in that room? I sit in the room… but I have no voice” he continued, referring to another controversy – this time over the government removing the Chief Justice, the sole non-political member of that panel.
The other members of the panel are the Prime Minister and a union minister nominated by the PM, meaning the ruling party, or alliance, controls nominations to the poll panel. “Why do the PM and Amit Shah decide who will be in the Election Commission? This government also changed the law to ensure no election commissioner gets punished for any action they take while in office. Why would they give such powers…”
“Amit Shah is looking at the ceiling,” Gandhi then quipped mid-speech, “Perhaps he will answer this question when he speaks.” So far Gandhi has made three PowerPoint presentations – two in August, in which he presented data indicating voter fraud in the Karnataka Lok Sabha and Maharashtra Assembly elections, and a third in September, in which he claimed centralised, mass-deletion of voter names.
This, he has argued, was only possible with active assistance from the EC. In each of the PPTs he accused the EC and BJP of working together to manipulate voter rolls to ensure an unprecedented string of electoral victories for the BJP since it came to power in 2014. The top poll panel and the ruling party responded each time to rubbish the allegations and demand categorical proof – which Gandhi said he provided in his presentations – of the charges.
“Electoral reform… this is very simple but the point is nobody wants to do it. The government doesn’t want to do it,” Gandhi continued, referring also to the controversy over Electronic Voting Machines used in polls, which the opposition insists has been tampered with to favour the BJP.
He also took aim at the BJP over a law that gives the Chief Election Commissioner and his deputies legal immunity for decisions taken while in office – and warned the Election Commission, “Don’t worry, we will change it back and we will come and find you.”
Gandhi, also the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, ripped into the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP’s ideological mentor, and accused it of the ‘wholesale capture’ of India’s institutional framework” – i.e., education, law enforcement, and electoral mechanisms.
“Everything emerges from the vote.. all institutions emerge from the vote. So it is obvious the RSS has to capture everything that emerges from the vote,” he said, “Everyone knows how Vice-Chancellors are placed on top of universities today… it does not matter their professional qualifications. The only thing that matters is their belonging to a particular organisation.”
The “capture” of the CBI and ED (i.e., the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate, both of which report to the union government) and the systematic placement of bureaucrats who align with its ideology is the second step in this process, he said. “The third is the institution that controls elections in the country – the Election Commission. I am not saying this without proof. I have put forward adequate proof…” he said.
Accusing the ECI of “colluding with those in power to shape the elections,” Gandhi asserted that election campaigns were being tailored as per the requirements of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and were sometimes months long. In a sharp cautioning the ECI, he said, “I want to assure the Election Commissioner that they might be under the impression that this law lets them get away with it, let me remind them, don’t worry, we are going to change the law, we are going to change it retroactively and we are going to come and find you,” he said, accusing the poll body of misusing legal protections.
Earlier initiating the debate on the electoral reforms, the Congress member Manish Tewari claimed that the Constitution did not provide for Special Intensive Revision. This was a provision given to the Election Commission but not a blanket-SIR across a full State like Tamil Nadu, West Bengal etc. SIR, he said was to be conducted within a specified electoral constituency. In whichever Assembly/ Parliamentary Constituency, SIR is being conducted, the Election Commission should table the reasons for the same being carried out.
The BJP MP Sanjay Jaiswal said the Opposition was raising the issue of SIR and vote-chori in order to distract from their heavy losses in the recently-concluded Bihar elections. He claimed that the first instance of vote-chori happened in 1947 when the whole of Congress Working Committee was with Sardar Patel, yet he was not made the Prime Minister. He lists out 1975 Emergency and 1987 Kashmir elections as examples of “Congress vote chori.”
Panchayati Raj Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh said across the world it was discussed that our elections are conducted in an impartial manner. We expected that the discussion would be limited to how to strengthen or improve the existing system, however the questions brought up by Congress MP Manish Tewari were to do with election organisation, which is a Constitutional subject. We cannot discuss voting organisation in the Lok Sabha, he said. He asserts that if the Election Commission is undertaking the Special Intensive Reform of electoral rolls, it is doing the right thing. He alleged that the He states that the Opposition is not trying to bring in electoral reform but rather trying to crush the electoral system.
The minister of State for Law and Justice, Arjun Ram Meghwal said equality was the basic principle of SIR. “One vote should belong to just one person. This is the basic idea to bring SIR into effect,” he said and added that the ECI had stuck to the principle of “one man, one vote, one value.”
