NEW DELHI: The BJP on Wednesday claimed irregularities in voter registration in Rae Bareli, Wayanad, Diamond Harbour, and Kannauj parliamentary seats and asked Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Abhishek Banerjee, and Akhilesh Yadav to resign as Lok Sabha MPs, alleging they secured victory in elections with "vote chori".
Giving a slide-show presentation on the issue at the BJP headquarters here on an 'analysis' of electoral rolls in these constituencies represented by opposition leaders, former Union minister Anurag Thakur also flagged "irregularities" in the voter registration in Kolathur assembly seat in Tamil Nadu and in Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh. He asked Chief Minister and DMK supremo M K Stalin and SP leader Dimple Yadav to resign for "rigging" election.
He slammed the Congress, TMC, Samajwadi Party, and DMK leaders for raising questions on the Election Commission. He accused them of running a vicious propaganda against the special intensive revision (SIR) of the elector rolls, which is currently underway in Bihar and would be launched in other states.
Thakur claimed that the aim of the opposition’s criticism was to protect their "vote bank of illegal Bangladeshi infiltration" and other "intruders" "Seeing this 'shor' (hue and cry) being made by the opposition, it now seems that 'chor machaye shor'", he said, suggesting those who are in the wrong are now crying foul.
"Rae Bareli, Wayanad, Kannuaj, to Diamond Harbour -- everywhere one question is coming up -- why did they make fake voters. Will they resign for indulging in vote chori and protecting intruders?" Thakur asked.
Levelling allegations of "vote chori", Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi had on Thursday, through a presentation at a press conefrence, cited data from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to claim that over 1 lakh votes were "stolen" in Mahadevapura assembly segment in Karnataka through five types of manipulation, including duplicate voters, fake and invalid addresses, single-address voters.
On Tuesday, opposition leaders took out a protest march from the Parliament House to the Election Commission's headquarters here on the issue, but were stopped and briefly detained by the police.
The Congress on Wednesday stepped up its campaign against alleged 'vote chori' by releasing a new video depicting how "fake votes" were being cast, with party chief Mallikarjun Kharge asking people to raise their voice and save constitutional institutions from the "clutches of the BJP".
Gandhi also shared the minute-long video and said, "Aapke vote ki chori aapke adhikar ki chori, aapki pehchaan ki chori hai".