Rahul Gandhi presents 5 ways of ‘vote chori’, calls out 'huge criminal fraud'

Congress MP and Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi on Thursday made explosive allegations and launched a blistering attack on the Election Commission of India (ECI), accusing the Constitutional body of colluding with the ruling BJP at the Centre to rig elections through systematic "vote chori (theft)".

Speaking at a press conference at the Congress headquarters Indira Bhawan in Delhi, Gandhi unveiled “explosive evidence” of electoral manipulation, pointing to voter list irregularities, suspicious turnout patterns, and suppression of electronic data.

He termed the stealing of votes as "an atom bomb on our democracy", demonstrating his point through a presentation which he explained in both Hindi and English.

Using the Mahadevapura assembly segment in Karnataka's Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha constituency, the LoP alleged that of the 6.5 lakh total votes in the segment, there was ‘vote chori’ of over 1 lakh votes.

Referring to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, he also said, "The BJP won 25 Lok Sabha seats with a margin of less than 33,000 votes. Which means PM Modi only needed to steal 25 seats to stay in power in 2024. This is why the EC is not giving us digital voter rolls."

“Congress research found over 1 lakh duplicate voters, invalid addresses, and bulk voters in Mahadevapura,” he said.

“A massive criminal fraud is being carried out against Indian democracy. The Election Commission, in partnership with the ruling party, is stealing elections,” he alleged.

Gandhi said a dedicated team of 30–40 Congress researchers spent six months analysing thousands of voter records in Mahadevpura — going through what he described as “seven feet of paper” (meaning the paperwork stood seven-foot tall) — to uncover five categories of vote manipulation:

1. Duplicate voters: 11,965

2. Fake & invalid addresses: 40,009

3. Bulk voters registered at one address: 10,452

4. Invalid photographs: 4,132

5. Misuse of Form 6 (new voter registration): 33,692

Duplicate voters

One striking example, Gandhi said, was that of a voter named Gurkirat Singh Dang, who appeared four times in different booths with the same name and address.

Gandhi also cited the example of one Aditya Srivastava, who appears four times in the electoral rolls, with two votes in Mahadevapura, one vote in Mumbai and one in Lucknow.

Similarly, one Vishal was registered in two booths in Mahadevpura and one in Varanasi Cantonment, Uttar Pradesh.

Fake & invalid addresses, bulk voters at same address

“We found fake addresses with house numbers stated as 0, street number 0. In booth 366, 46 voters were listed as living in a single-room house. No one actually lived there,” Gandhi said.

He also offered the example of a commercial address used for several voters, though nobody actually lived there, and alleged that Congress workers were physically assaulted on multiple occasions when they tried to verify addresses.

Invalid photographs, misuse of Form 6 (new voter registration)

Using the example of a 70-year-woman called Shakun Rani, Gandhi showed how she had registered as a voter twice in two months, with her photograph slightly modified the second time to make her seem like a different person.

Moreover, he displayed several photographs that were "indistinguishable or micro-sized".

He also pointed out several instances of gibberish where 'father's name' should have been, with proper names replaced by a random collection of alphabets.

As part of his presentation Gandhi also pointed to the recent Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra elections, where opinion polls, exit polls, and even Congress’s internal surveys had projected vastly different outcomes.

“There were massive swings that defied logic. These weren’t political waves; they were statistical shocks,” he said.

As an example, he cited Haryana, where the Congress lost the 2024 Assembly elections by eight seats. As per the presentation, the total vote gap in those eight seats was just 22,779, out of a total of 2 crore voters.

Claiming the ECI made every attempt to disrupt the discovery process, he said, “This is not an accident; it is by design. If the EC gave us electronic data, we could analyse it in seconds. Instead, they forced us to decode flawed paper records over six months. Why?”

He accused the ECI of deliberately making it harder for Opposition parties to scrutinise electoral rolls and turnout data. "EC refuses to share digital voter rolls. EC changed the rule to restrict access to CCTV footage. What is the EC hiding?" he asked.

Citing the scale of the alleged irregularities, Gandhi said the Congress has filed a formal complaint with the Election Commission — but has received no “meaningful response".

The Congress is now demanding:

• Voter lists in machine-readable format

• Preservation of polling station CCTV footage

• Independent verification of voter data

“What we’ve shown today is crystal clear and irrefutable. If democracy is to survive, this must stop,” Gandhi said.

Citing the Maharashtra assembly elections of 2024, Gandhi claimed the ECI's refusal to provide machine-readable voter lists confirmed suspicions that the poll was rigged in the BJP’s favour.

“In five months between the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections, 1 crore new voters were added — more than the total added in five years. That raised red flags,” he said at the start of his presentation to explain what led the party to conduct its internal investigation. He also flagged an “unnatural spike” in voter turnouts after 5.00 pm, claiming that Congress workers reported no such increase on the ground.