LoP in the Lok Sabha and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addresses a press conference, in New Delhi. (PTI Photo)
NEW DELHI: Alleging that the 2024 Haryana assembly elections were stolen through manipulation of voters list by Election Commission in collusion with BJP, leader of opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday presented a deep dive on electoral rolls to claim that around 25 lakh fake voters, or 12.5% of the total 2 crore, participated in the state polls that Congress lost by 22,000 votes on eight seats and by 1.18 lakh votes in all.He also alleged, with a “few testimonies”, that 3.5 lakh voters were purged from Haryana’s electoral list and that most of them were Congress sympathisers, going on to predict that similar irregularities will take place in the Bihar polls.Accusing EC, BJP and PM Modi of destroying the foundations of India’s democracy, Rahul urged Gen Z and the youth to understand the nature of election theft – and that BJP govts, including at the Centre, are not “legitimate” govts and it is Congress that had won the elections – and “restore our democracy through truth and non-violence”.Calling his ‘vote chori’ expose “H-files” in place of the much-awaited “H-bomb”, Rahul said the Haryana rolls had 19 lakh bulk voters, 5.21 lakh duplicate voters and 93,000 with invalid addresses. The misuse of Forms 6 and 7 would have likely added another 7-10 lakh fake voters but no proof could be provided for the same because EC has since the last press conference blocked access to the data on voter addition and deletion, he said. Citing “documents”, Rahul created a flutter by showing a photograph of a registered voter that he said was actually of a Brazilian model, which was used to cast votes 22 times in 10 different booths under different names like Sweety, Saraswati, Seema and Vimla. He also came up with voter names which, he claimed, appeared 223 and 143 times in the rolls.”Why so many fake multiple voters? This is to create space so that fake voters can cast votes (in those places),” he explained.”With this kind of corrupted voters’ list, there is no chance of a fair election,” Rahul said. Similar vote theft had occurred in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra elections.In a significant statement, he said a similar presentation can be done for Bihar once data for polls in the state is out – a few persons from Bihar gave “testimonies” at his presentation that they were removed from the voters list and not added despite efforts. Rahul claimed anomalies are more difficult to spot because the voter lists are provided to parties on the last day. With poll outcomes hinging on a margin as little as 2-3%, there can be no fair election if 8-12% of the voters are fake, he said.
