'Bhayankar vote chori in Maharashtra, Karnataka': Rahul questions ECI's role
What's the story
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of colluding with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to rig elections in Maharashtra and Karnataka. Speaking at a press interaction, he alleged that the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections were "stolen" and raised concerns about voter list manipulation in Karnataka's Mahadevapura constituency. Gandhi claimed over one crore new voters were added to Maharashtra's electoral rolls between the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections within five months.
Election irregularities
'ECI's decision to destroy CCTV footage is suspicious'
"In Maharashtra, the addition of more voters in 5 months than in 5 years raised our suspicions...and then a huge jump in voter turnout after 5pm," he said. This shows that the election was stolen, he alleged. He also pointed out that the ECI's decision to destroy CCTV footage after the polls was surprising. "What is the crux of the problem? The voter list is the property of this country," he said, alleging institutional collusion between the ECI and BJP.
Karnataka allegations
Fraudulent votes in Mahadevapura, claims Gandhi
In Karnataka, Gandhi alleged over one lakh votes out of a total of 6.5 lakh were fraudulently cast in Mahadevapura's assembly segment. There was a "vote chori" of over one lakh votes, he said for Karnataka too. He claimed the Congress research found duplicate voters, invalid addresses, and bulk entries there. The constituency saw a close contest between Congress's Mansoor Ali Khan and BJP's PC Mohan during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Mohan won by 32,707 votes.
Data scrutiny
Why ECI didn't provide electronic voter lists, asks Gandhi
Gandhi also questioned why the ECI didn't provide electronic voter lists, claiming it would expose fraud quickly. He said scrutinizing non-machine-readable papers is tedious and time-consuming. Showing a pile of paper, he said, "This task took us six months... If the Election Commission gave us electronic data, it would take us 30 seconds." "These papers do not allow for optical character recognition. So if you scan them, you can't get the data out of them. EC deliberately provides non-machine-readable papers."
Twitter Post
Same name appeared 3 times: Gandhi
#WATCH | Delhi: Lok Sabha LoP and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi says, "... Here is a duplicate voter. There are 11,965 voters of this type. This is a gentleman called Gurkirat Singh Dang. Gurkira Singh Dang appears once, twice, three times, four times in four different polling booths… pic.twitter.com/pTWAOZhSdU
— ANI (@ANI) August 7, 2025
Survey discrepancies
Disconnect between pre-poll surveys and final results
Gandhi also expressed concern over the disconnect between pre-poll surveys and final results in states like Haryana and Madhya Pradesh. He said anti-incumbency affects all parties, but the BJP seems unaffected by it. "Exit polls, opinion polls saying one thing, you saw in the Haryana election, you saw in the Madhya Pradesh election, and then suddenly the result goes in a completely different direction with massive swings," he added.