Not individuals, software being used to delete votes: Rahul Gandhi
What's the story
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has alleged that some group is trying to delete millions of voters across India. He made the allegations at a press conference on Thursday, claiming he has "100% proof" of the vote deletion, which, he said, is being done in a centralized manner. "This is being done not using individuals but using software. Look at the serial numbers...A software is picking up the first name in the booth and using it to delete votes."
Karnataka
Gandhi cites Karnataka's Aland constituency
He said someone ran an automated program to ensure that the first voter at the booth was the applicant. "That same person got cell phones from outside the state, used them to file the application, and we are pretty certain that this was done in a centralized manner and it was done at scale." Gandhi cited an example from Karnataka's Aland constituency, where he said 6,018 votes were attempted to be deleted but were caught by chance.
Alad
'Some other force hijacked the process'
"They are much higher than 6,018, but somebody got caught deleting those 6,018 votes," he claimed. "What happened was that the booth-level officer there noted that her uncle's vote was deleted, so she checked who deleted her uncle's vote, and she found that it was a neighbor who deleted the vote....Neither the person deleting the vote nor the person whose vote was deleted knew. Some other force hijacked the process and deleted the vote."
Targeted communities
Examples
Gandhi cited the example of a lady named 'Godabai' to claim that the deletion attempts were intentionally targeting booths where Congress was winning. He said that someone created false logins under the name "Godabai" and sought to delete 12 voters. "Godabai has no idea." In another example, Gandhi shared that a man named Suryakant "apparently deleted 12 voters in 14 minutes." "Babita Choudhari is one of the votes that he (Suryakant) is supposed to have deleted," Gandhi remarked.
Evidence presented
Gandhi targets CEC
Then, directly targeting Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, he said that Karnataka CID had issued 18 letters to the election authority in 18 months seeking information. The CID requested information such as the destination IP of the device used to fill out voter deletion forms and OTP trails. "They are not giving it because this will lead us to where the operation is being done from. This is absolute solid proof...Gyanesh Kumar is protecting the people who are doing this."
Twitter Post
'This is not going to stop'
#WATCH | Delhi: Lok Sabha LoP and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi says, "We have started getting help from inside the Election Commission. I am making it clear that we are now getting information from inside the Election Commission, and this is not going to stop..." pic.twitter.com/v7Ojh1CJe8
— ANI (@ANI) September 18, 2025
Allegations against EC
Gandhi's ongoing battle against alleged vote theft
This is the second press conference in Gandhi's series of allegations regarding "vote chori." In an earlier press conference on August 7, he had accused the Election Commission (EC) of colluding with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to facilitate vote theft. He claimed that after six months of research by a 40-member team, Congress had discovered large-scale irregularities in the Mahadevapura assembly segment's electoral rolls.