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Rahul Gandhi alleges massive 'vote theft', accuses poll body of colluding with BJP
The Congress politician showed thousands of entries with fake addresses, voters registered in bulk under single homes, invalid photographs, and improper use of registration forms
- PUBLISHED: Thu 7 Aug 2025, 3:00 PM
Congress leader and India's Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, on Thursday accused the country’s Election Commission of enabling large-scale voter fraud to favour the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), calling it a “crime against democracy.”
At a press conference in Indira Bhawan in New Delhi, Gandhi alleged that millions of fake voters were added in key states, voter lists were manipulated, and critical data was withheld by the Election Commission.
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He said his party had uncovered what he described as a massive “vote theft,” and accused the poll body of colluding with the ruling party by denying access to electronic voter lists and erasing CCTV footage from polling stations.
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“This is a full-blown attack on our democratic system,” Gandhi said, taking the gathering through a PowerPoint presentation on a giant screen, dressed in his favourite T-shirt. “The Election Commission should be protecting democracy, not destroying it."
Gandhi said the Congress party’s internal research found over 100,000 irregular or duplicate votes in a single constituency, Mahadevapura, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. The irregularities, he claimed, were enough to influence the final result in Bangalore Central.
According to Gandhi, the alleged vote theft in that constituency included tens of thousands of entries with fake addresses, voters registered in bulk under single homes, invalid photographs, and improper use of registration forms meant for new voters.
He also cited similar concerns in state of Maharashtra, where he claimed that nearly four million new voters were mysteriously added in just five months , more than what was recorded in the previous five years combined. “We asked for machine-readable voter lists. They refused to give them. That alone tells you something is being hidden,” he said.
In Karnataka, Gandhi said internal projections had indicated Congress would win 16 seats, but the party ended up with only nine. He pointed to a gap of just over 114,000 votes in Mahadevapura, alleging that 100,250 of those votes were fraudulent, a figure based on what he called detailed analysis conducted over six months.
“This entire process is being sabotaged. If the EC had given us the proper data, we could have analysed it in 30 seconds. Instead, they gave us scanned copies that can’t even be read by a computer,” he said, accusing the Commission of deliberately making scrutiny impossible.
He described the situation as an “atom bomb” against free elections and warned that once the Opposition comes to power, those responsible, including polling personnel, would be held accountable.
Gandhi’s remarks come ahead of a planned rally in Bengaluru on Friday. He and Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge are expected to lead a protest march at Freedom Park, calling it a fight to protect voter rights.
He also made a direct appeal to India's judiciary to intervene. “We are presenting concrete evidence. The courts must take this seriously. The Election Commission cannot be allowed to operate with impunity.”
While the Congress party has filed complaints with the poll body, Gandhi said there has been no response. The Election Commission has not yet issued a statement addressing the allegations.
The charges come amid growing political tensions in India, where the recent elections saw the BJP return to power but with a reduced majority. Gandhi’s campaign to challenge the legitimacy of some results could fuel further scrutiny of India’s electoral process in the coming months.
