NEW DELHI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said unweiled a “hydrogen bomb” of evidence on alleged “vote chori”, accusing Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar of shielding those he claimed had “destroyed Indian democracy.”Speaking at a press conference at the Indira Bhawan Auditorium, the Leader of Opposition cited Aland constituency in Karnataka, where he alleged that an attempt was made to delete 6,018 votes.Rahul Gandhi made a claim about CEC Gyanesh Kumar. “CEC is protecting the people who have destroyed Indian democracy,” Gandhi added.”This is I am saying with solid proof,” the leader of opposition said.Aland is a constituency in Karnataka, and somebody tried to delete 6,018 votes there, he claimed.The Congress MP said, “Aland is a constituency in Karnataka. Somebody tried to delete 6018 votes. We don’t know the total number of votes that were deleted in Aland in the 2023 election. They are much higher than 6,018, but somebody got caught deleting those 6018 votes, and it was caught by coincidence. What happened was that the booth-level officer there noted that her uncle’s vote was deleted, so she checked who deleted her uncle’s vote, and she found that it was a neighbour who deleted the vote. She asked her neighbour, but they said I did not delete any vote. Neither the person deleting the vote nor the person whose vote was deleted knew. Some other force hijacked the process and deleted the vote…”This press conference came 40 days after Rahul raised questions on the electoral outcome of Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat, claiming that there was “chori” (stealing) of one lakh votes in Mahadevapura assembly seat during the 2024 polls. He had then claimed that the Election Commission was colluding with the BJP, which he called a “crime” against the Constitution.Earlier, addressing the concluding event of his Voter Adhikar Yatra on September 1, Gandhi had said his party will soon come out with a “hydrogen bomb” of revelations about “vote chori” and after that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not be able to show his face to the country.Last month, Gandhi, citing data from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, had claimed that over one lakh votes were “stolen” through manipulation in Mahadevapura assembly segment in Karnataka, and asserted that “vote chori” is an “atom bomb on our democracy”.
