The controversy surrounding Rahul Gandhi’s accusations of ‘vote theft’ in elections is intensifying, with Shashi Tharoor, a prominent figure in the Congress party, adding his voice of support. Gandhi has termed the alleged actions a violation of the constitution. Senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge echoed this sentiment, emphasizing the need to safeguard democracy. The BJP has dismissed the claims as baseless. Tharoor, known for his occasional divergence from the party line, has called for the Election Commission to take action.
Tharoor, a former Union Minister, has been expressing views that sometimes differ from the official party position. However, he aligned himself with Rahul Gandhi’s concerns about vote manipulation, considering them a serious matter. He took to social media platform X to express his views, stating that the questions raised “must be seriously addressed in the interests of all parties & all voters. Our democracy is too precious to allow its credibility to be destroyed by incompetence, carelessness or worse, deliberate tampering.” He further urged the Election Commission to take immediate action and keep the public informed.
Rahul Gandhi, the former Congress President, cited data from a Karnataka assembly constituency, alleging that a ‘vote theft’ model had been implemented in multiple constituencies to benefit the BJP. He claimed this was a result of collusion between the BJP and the Election Commission and constituted a violation of the constitution.
Gandhi presented data from the Mahadevapura assembly constituency in Karnataka, highlighting alleged irregularities. He noted that it took six months to gather evidence of the election manipulation. He also suggested that the Election Commission’s failure to provide machine-readable voter list data hindered the detection of these irregularities.
Gandhi highlighted the Mahadevapura constituency specifically, pointing out that his team’s analysis of the data revealed a pattern. He claimed that the BJP lagged in six out of seven assembly constituencies in the Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha seat but secured a significant victory in Mahadevapura.
The Congress leader alleged that 1,00,250 votes were stolen in the Mahadevapura constituency, where the BJP won by a margin of 32,707 votes. He described the irregularities found in the constituency, including duplicate voters, fake addresses, voters registered at the same address, voters with fake photos, and misuse of Form-6 for adding new voters. He provided the example of a voter, Aditya Srivastava, whose name appeared in multiple locations on the voter list.