Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, on Thursday, August 7, accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of helping the BJP manipulate electoral rolls to win the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Speaking at a detailed press conference in New Delhi, Gandhi claimed there is “100% proof” that elections were stolen, and called it a crime against the Constitution and democracy.
Rahul Gandhi said his party had been investigating the issue for six months and had collected strong evidence of what he called vote chori (vote theft). He presented a digital analysis of voter data from Karnataka’s Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency and its Mahadevapura Assembly segment, claiming that over one lakh fake or invalid voters were found there alone.
“In Mahadevapura, we found 11,965 duplicate voters, 40,009 with fake addresses, over 10,000 registered from the same address, 4,132 voters with invalid photos, and over 33,000 misusing the new voter registration form,” Gandhi said.
According to him, the Congress won six out of seven Assembly segments in Bangalore Central, yet lost the parliamentary seat to BJP by a margin of 32,707 votes — largely due to the suspicious votes in Mahadevapura, where they lost by over 1.14 lakh votes.
He further alleged that the Prime Minister’s majority in the Lok Sabha depends on just 25 seats won by margins of less than 33,000 votes. “The BJP only needed to steal 25 seats to stay in power,” he said.
Gandhi didn’t hold back on his criticism of the ECI. “If they don’t give us machine-readable voter lists and CCTV footage, then they are partaking in the crime,” he said. He claimed that the poll body has refused access to such data and changed laws to prevent transparency.
He urged the judiciary to intervene, saying, “The democracy that we love so much doesn’t exist anymore.” Gandhi also said that anti-incumbency affects every political party in India — except the BJP. “How is it possible that only one party never suffers anti-incumbency? Elections are being choreographed,” he said, suggesting that the electoral process was being manipulated over months.
“This is about protecting the idea of one person, one vote,” he said. “If the voter list is not real, and if fake people are being added while genuine ones are being removed, then democracy is in danger.”
Moments after the press conference, the Election Commission responded. The Karnataka Chief Electoral Office sent Rahul Gandhi a letter asking him to submit proof of the claims he made, including names of voters and documents shown in the media presentation.
“You are kindly requested to sign and return the enclosed declaration under Rule 20(3)(b) of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960,” the ECI wrote, asking him to submit the evidence by the end of the day, August 8.
In his statement, Gandhi stood firm: “Take this as an oath. I’m speaking as a politician to the people of India. And the ECI hasn’t said Rahul Gandhi is wrong.”
He also recalled that his suspicions began during the 2023 Chhattisgarh elections and were confirmed during the 2024 Maharashtra polls, both of which the BJP won. He claimed the evidence of large-scale voter fraud is not limited to Karnataka but is present across the country.
“The ECI is not just silent; it is helping destroy evidence of vote theft,” Gandhi alleged. “We are not just raising an alarm, we have the proof,” he concluded.
