‘Vote chori’, ‘ghuspethiya’: Rahul Gandhi targets BJP, questions poll fairness

Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday launched a blistering attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), alleging that “every sixth” BJP MP in the Lok Sabha had won through “vote chori” (vote theft) and questioning the legitimacy of their mandates.

In a strongly worded post on X, Rahul Gandhi claimed that out of the BJP’s 240 MPs, a significant number owed their victories to electoral manipulation.

“Through vote theft, sometimes individual seats are stolen, and at other times, an entire government. Of the 240 BJP MPs in the Lok Sabha, roughly every sixth MP secured seat through vote chori,” he said.

Taking a swipe using the BJP’s own political vocabulary, Rahul Gandhi added, “They are not hard to identify — should we, in the BJP's own parlance, label them ‘ghuspethiya’?”

He extended the charge to state politics as well, alleging large-scale manipulation in Haryana. “What of Haryana? There, the entire government itself is a ‘ghuspethiya’. The very institutions they keep in their pockets — the ones they manipulate to distort voter lists and the electoral process — are themselves ‘remote-controlled’,” he said.

Escalating his criticism, Rahul Gandhi asserted that the ruling party’s “real fear is the truth”, claiming that it would struggle electorally if polls were conducted fairly. “If fair elections were to be held, they would not be able to win even 140 seats today,” he said.

The remarks come a day after Rahul Gandhi described the BJP’s victories in the recent assembly elections in West Bengal and Assam as a “theft” of the people’s mandate, framing the outcome as part of a broader threat to democratic institutions.

In a separate post, he cautioned against political gloating over the defeat of the All India Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, urging Opposition parties to close ranks.

“Some… are gloating about TMC’s loss. They need to understand this clearly — the theft of Assam and Bengal’s mandate is a big step forward by the BJP in its mission to destroy Indian democracy. Put petty politics aside. This is not about one party… this is about India,” he said.

The BJP, meanwhile, secured a decisive mandate in the assembly elections, ousting the Trinamool Congress from power in West Bengal and returning to office in Assam for a third consecutive term — victories that have significantly altered the political landscape and intensified the war of words between the ruling party and the Opposition.

With PTI inputs