PTI
NEW DELHI, Sep 18: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday accused Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar of shielding “vote chors” and those “destroying democracy”, citing alleged large-scale voter deletions and manipulations in Karnataka and Maharashtra.
Addressing a press conference at the Congress headquarters, Gandhi said the Election Commission (EC) must stop such practices and furnish within a week the details sought by the Karnataka CID in its probe into voter deletions.
“These revelations are another milestone in showing the youth of this country how elections are being rigged,” said the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha. He, however, clarified that these were not the “hydrogen bomb” of disclosures he has promised, adding, “Those will come soon.”
Citing Karnataka’s Aland constituency, Gandhi alleged that 6,018 Congress supporters’ votes were targeted for deletion in 2023 through impersonation and automated applications filed using mobile numbers from outside the state.
He narrated how a booth-level officer discovered the anomaly when her uncle’s name was removed, allegedly without her neighbour’s knowledge, exposing what Gandhi described as a “hijacked process.”
“These deletions are being carried out using software,” he claimed, while also citing Maharashtra’s Rajura constituency, where voters were allegedly added fraudulently.
The Congress leader said the Karnataka CID has written 18 letters to the EC over 18 months, seeking information such as IP addresses and OTP trails of the deletion requests. “They are not providing this because it will reveal where the operation is being conducted. The CEC is protecting those responsible,” Gandhi alleged.
He even presented on stage a voter whose name was attempted to be deleted and the person impersonated in the process — both of whom denied knowledge of the applications.
“The EC knows who is doing this. They are defending the murderers of democracy. I want every youngster in India to know this — it is your future they are stealing,” Gandhi said.
Earlier, during his Voter Adhikar Yatra on September 1, Gandhi had promised a “hydrogen bomb” of revelations on “vote chori”, claiming that after its release “Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not be able to show his face to the country.”
Last month, he had also alleged that over one lakh votes were “stolen” in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura assembly segment during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, describing “vote chori” as an “atom bomb on our democracy.”
