– Abdul Bari Masoud
For years, the suspicion lingered like a stubborn shadow: India’s elections were not entirely as clean as they seemed. Opposition leaders hinted at irregularities. Activists questioned the electoral rolls. Citizens complained about missing names. But such whispers were often drowned out by the triumphalism of landslide victories.
That changed this August in Bengaluru. Standing before a roaring crowd at a “Vote Adhikar” rally, the Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi decided to turn those whispers into a thunderous accusation – complete with numbers, names, and what he called “conclusive proof” of largescale electoral fraud.
“One Lok Sabha constituency has been stolen in Karnataka. This is a criminal act against the people. And this is not an isolated case; it is a nationwide operation,” said Gandhi at the rally.
A day before the rally, Gandhi held a press conference at the party headquarters – armed with solid evidence and facts. He showed slides of electoral rolls which included names of voters with house number “zero” and father’s name listed as bungled letters.
His charges have sent ripples through Parliament, jolted the Election Commission of India (ECI), and reignited a debate over whether the world’s largest democracy is as transparent as it claims to be.
The Mystery of Mahadevapura
At the heart of Gandhi’s exposé lies Bengaluru Central, a key Lok Sabha seat in Karnataka. In the 2024 elections, Congress won 7 out of 8 Assembly segments within this constituency. The eighth, Mahadevapura, delivered a baffling result: a BJP victory margin of 1,14,000 votes – erasing Congress’s gains elsewhere.
Determined to understand why, Congress launched an internal investigation. The ECI’s refusal to release machine-readable voter rolls meant months of manual labour. Volunteers and data teams pored over lakhs of pages for half a year. What they found was staggering: 1,00,250 fake voters in Mahadevapura alone, neatly divided into five fraudulent categories.
Five Faces of Electoral Fraud
- Duplicate Voters (11,965 cases)
– Same voters appearing multiple times in voter rolls
– E.g. – One Mr Gurkirat Singh Dang shows up 4 times in 4 different booths!
– Identical voter IDs found across different cities (Bengaluru, Varanasi, Lucknow)
- Fake Addresses (40,009 cases)
– Voters registered at non-existent addresses (e.g., “House Number: 0”)
– Fictitious relative names used (e.g. HHGASJHOFA as father’ s name)
- Bulk voters in a single address (10,452 cases)
– Unusually high numbers of voters registered at single addresses
– Examples: 80+ voters in one room, 68 voters at a brewery called “Biere Club”
- Invalid Photos (4,132 cases)
– Unclear or indistinguishable voter ID photos
– Anyone can vote with these voter ID cards since photos are not verifiable
- Form 6 Misuse (33,692 cases)
– Form 6 is designed for first time voters, mainly 18-21, to easily register to vote. However, many older people, even 90+ years, have been registered as “first-time voters”, some multiple times.
– No evidence of any ECI verification of any of these people. E.g. One Shakun Rani aged 70, filled Form 6 as a first-time voter twice in two months, and voted twice as well!
“We can prove, seat by seat, that the Prime Minister has been elected with stolen votes – if the ECI gives us the data.” – Rahul Gandhi
A Small Margin, a Big Impact
Gandhi’s larger argument hinges on the idea that it takes surprisingly few fraudulent votes to tip the balance of power in India’s fragmented electoral landscape.
In 2024 Haryana Assembly elections, Congress lost by 8 seats, with a combined margin of just 22,779 votes.
In 2024 general elections, BJP won 25 seats by margins under 32,000 votes – seats that ensured Narendra Modi’s continued premiership.
If the Mahadevapura pattern were replicated elsewhere, Gandhi claims, the BJP’s national tally could have been artificially inflated in 70 to 100 constituencies.
The Bihar Alarm
Rahul’s warnings come as Bihar undergoes a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists. Opposition parties there allege mass deletions of genuine voters – particularly from communities less likely to back the ruling party.
“This is the first stage,” Gandhi told supporters. “First in Bihar, then all of India.”
His term for it – Vote Chori has since become the rallying cry of Congress’s new national campaign.
ECI Strikes Back
The ECI’s reply was swift and barbed. It demanded that Gandhi file an affidavit under oath to substantiate his claims. Without it, the Commission said, he should “apologise to the nation.”
The ECI defended its refusal to provide machine-readable rolls, citing a 2019 Supreme Court ruling in Kamal Nath vs ECI. It also justified deleting polling booth CCTV footage, arguing that reviewing 1 lakh tapes would take 273 years and was pointless unless an election petition was filed.
Not Just a Congress Cause
While BJP has dismissed Gandhi’s allegations as political theatre, several other parties have backed his call for electoral reform.
The CPI(M) has warned that ECI must restore public trust by addressing Opposition concerns, rather than “functioning as a quarrelsome adjunct of the ruling party.”
It further stated that “in recent times, serious questions have been raised about the fairness of elections – ranging from irregularities in the preparation of electoral rolls, particularly SIR in Bihar, to malpractices witnessed in the state elections of Maharashtra and Karnataka – which appear to favour the ruling party.”
Prof. M.H. Jawahirullah, MLA and President of Manithaneya Makkal Katchi, also echoed Gandhi’s charge. He told Radiance that over 1,25,000 fake votes in one constituency cannot be brushed aside. This must be investigated.
Why This Matters
Gandhi’s rhetoric has grown sharper since the ECI’s pushback. At the Bengaluru rally, he directly accused the Commission of acting as the BJP’s political agent: “Why are you destroying video evidence? Why is the ECI committing massive fraud? Why is the ECI threatening the opposition?”
He also framed the fight as a question of national identity: Who is a true Indian? His answer: “A true Indian is one whose right to vote is respected, whose vote is counted, and whose democracy is protected.”
India’s elections are more than contests for power – they are the world’s largest collective act of democratic faith. If Rahul Gandhi’s allegations are true, that promise has been broken on a historic scale. If they are false, the credibility of Opposition and media is at stake.
Either way, the ECI faces a trust deficit. Its refusal to release voter data, even in the face of mounting public doubt, risks deepening cynicism.
Congress plans to expand its Vote Chori campaign into a multi-state movement, combining public rallies with legal challenges. Its demands are clear: Release machine-readable electoral rolls; Preserve and share CCTV footage from polling stations; Conduct independent audits of voter rolls in disputed constituencies.
Whether these demands are met may determine the trajectory of India’s next elections.
The Last Word
In Mahadevapura’s official count, BJP won comfortably. In Congress’s count, the story is very different. Somewhere between those numbers lies the truth – hidden in stacks of paper rolls, deleted CCTV footage, and the refusal to make public the very data that could settle the matter.
Until that truth emerges, Rahul Gandhi’s rallying cry will echo: “If you give us the data, we will prove that the Prime Minister has been elected with stolen votes.”
And with that claim, the battle for India’s democracy has shifted from polling booths to the court of public opinion – where the verdict may be even more consequential.
