New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi sharpened his tirade against the Election Commission of India (ECI) by launching a no-holds-barred attack on the poll panel on Wednesday.
Accusing the EC of colluding with the BJP to “steal elections”, the Congress leader alleged that ‘fake’ people were being added to voter lists. The Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha tried to validate his point by showing the Karnataka electoral rolls, and claimed there was “bhayankar chori” (massive theft) of votes in the Mahadevapura assembly segment of Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha constituency.
The Congress MP said there was a “vote chori” of over 1 lakh votes out of 6.5 lakh votes in the Mahadevapura assembly segment.
Responding to the serious charge, the Karnataka Election Commission asked Rahul to submit a formal declaration supporting his claim, along with names of electors allegedly wrongfully included in the voter list, to initiate necessary proceedings.
The Karnataka poll body asserted that the electoral rolls were prepared in a transparent manner. “Election results can be questioned only by way of election petition before the Hon’ble high court. You are kindly requested to sign and return the enclosed Declaration/Oath under Rule 20(3)(b) of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, along with the name(s) of such elector(s) so that necessary proceedings can be initiated,” the Karnataka chief electoral officer wrote to Rahul.
The Raebareli MP said an internal research by Congress found “over one lakh duplicate voters, invalid addresses, bulk voters in Mahadevapura constituency in Karnataka.”
In last year’s Lok Sabha elections, Bangalore Central saw a close contest. Congress candidate Mansoor Ali Khan led for most of the rounds of counting, but it was BJP’s PC Mohan who won by 32,707 votes.
Rahul told newspersons that while Congress won six out of seven segments, the grand old party lost in the Mahadevapura segment.
In a graphic presentation, Rahul showed there was “vote theft” of 1,00,250 votes, with 11,965 duplicate voters, 40,009 voters with fake and invalid addresses, 10,452 bulk voters or single-address voters, and 4,132 voters with invalid photos.
He also said that 33,692 voters misused Form 6 for new or first-time voters.
Questioning the Election Commission’s decision not to give the voter lists in electronic format, Rahul suggested doing so would expose its “fraud” within 30 seconds.
“This is a challenge here. This is seven feet of paper. If I want to find out if you have voted twice or if your name occurs twice in the voter list, I have to take your picture, and then I have to compare it to every single bit of paper. It is a very tedious process,” Rahul said.
He claimed that the poll panel was deliberately providing “non-machine-readable papers” to prevent the parties from scrutinising the voter data.
“This task took us six months (Mahadevapura claim). If the Election Commission gave us electronic data, it would take us 30 seconds. Why are we being given data like this? So that it is not analysed…These papers do not allow for optical character recognition,” Rahul posed.
Rahul took a dig at BJP, saying that while every party faces anti-incumbency, the saffron party seems to be not affected.
“Fake people are being added to the voter list. There has been suspicion among the public based on a couple of points. Anti-incumbency hits every single party in every single democracy, but for some reason, the BJP is the only party in a democratic framework that doesn’t suffer from the idea of anti-incumbency,” he said.
The Congress, led by Rahul, will take out a massive protest march against the ECI in Karnataka over alleged voter fraud.
