Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi
New Delhi, Aug 7: Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, has once again taken aim at the Election Commission, accusing it of colluding with the BJP in electoral fraud during the recent Lok Sabha elections.
Addressing a press conference on Thursday, Rahul Gandhi alleged that fake voters were added to electoral rolls, and to support his claim, he presented documents related to the voters' list in Karnataka.
He specifically targeted the Mahadevapura assembly segment of the Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha constituency, claiming that over one lakh fake votes were cast there. “Out of the 6.5 lac votes in Mahadevapura, more than 1 lac are fraudulent,” he alleged.
Rahul explained that Congress' internal post-poll analysis had focused on Karnataka, where the party expected to win 16 seats but managed only nine. “We zoomed in on seven unexpected defeats. We selected one Lok Sabha seat and one assembly segment for deeper analysis – Mahadevapura,” he said.
According to him, their investigation found over 1 lac fake voters and invalid addresses in the constituency.
“Most of these fake addresses fall into three categories: non-existent addresses, addresses with zero house or street numbers, or unverifiable addresses. For example, in Booth 366, 46 voters were registered as residing in a single small room – different families, same room. None of them existed,” he claimed.
He further alleged that 11,965 fake voters were found with duplicate names and addresses. “One person named Gurkirat Singh Dang appeared once, twice, thrice, and four times in four different polling booths – same name, same address, different booths. This isn't an isolated case; there are thousands like him in this constituency,” Rahul said.
He raised concerns over the Election Commission not providing voter lists in electronic format. “If they had, this fraud could have been exposed in just 30 seconds,” he said.
Using a seven-foot-long printed voter list as a prop, he said, “To find duplicates, I have to take a person’s photo and manually compare it with entries across hundreds of pages. It’s a tedious process.”
Rahul argued that fake names are being added to the rolls systematically. “In any democracy, there's always anti-incumbency. Yet, the only party that seems immune to it is the BJP. People are beginning to question why,” he concluded.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, Bengaluru Central witnessed a close contest. Congress candidate Mansoor Ali Khan was leading in early rounds, but BJP’s P C Mohan eventually won by a margin of 32,707 votes.