In a series of grave and strongly worded allegations, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday claimed that the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections were “stolen,” accusing the Election Commission of India (ECI) of colluding with the ruling BJP. He also flagged alleged large-scale voter list manipulation in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura constituency, raising broader concerns about the credibility of electoral processes in the country.
Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters here, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said the Congress put together a team and collected "concrete evidence of vote chori" in six months.
Gandhi said his party had long suspected irregularities in the Maharashtra polls, and the final results confirmed their worst fears. “The Maharashtra results confirmed our suspicion that the assembly election was stolen,” he said. “The Election Commission refusing to provide a machine-readable voter list convinced us of its collusion with the BJP.”
If the EC does not give us machine-readable data for the past 10-15 years and the CCTV footage, they are partaking in the crime, Gandhi said.
"The judiciary needs to get involved in this because the democracy that we love so much does not exist," the former Congress president said.
Citing figures, Gandhi alleged that between the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections in Maharashtra, over one crore new voters were added to the electoral rolls within just five months—more than what had been added over a span of five years. This sudden spike, he said, raised serious questions. “And then something very interesting they did. They said they are going to destroy the CCTV footage. This was surprising because there was a question in Maharashtra about a massive voting after 5.30 PM for the numbers to add up. Our people knew that in the polling booths, no such thing happened,” he said.
Gandhi contended that the absence of evidence to justify the late surge in voting, combined with the ECI’s decision to destroy CCTV footage, pointed to “reasonable certainty” of institutional collusion. “What is the crux of the problem? The voter list is the property of this country. The Election Commission refuses to give us the voter list,” he added.
The Congress leader also shared the difficulties his team faced while analysing the voter data provided by the EC, the LoP provided an image ofthe stacks of paper with the EC data . “This is a challenge here. This is seven feet of paper. Let’s suppose I want to find out if you have voted twice or if your name occurs twice in the voter list, I have to take your picture and then I have to compare it to every single bit of paper. That’s the process, and it’s a very tedious process,” he explained.
He added that his team had initially planned to examine multiple constituencies, but the manual nature of the documents made it nearly impossible. “This task took us six months… If the Election Commission gave us electronic data, it would take us 30 seconds. I repeat, this is why we are being given data like this, so that it is not analysed,” Gandhi said. He alleged that the printed lists were intentionally provided in formats that did not support optical character recognition (OCR). “These papers do not allow for OCR. So if you scan them, you can’t get the data out of them. Why is the Election Commission protecting these pieces of paper? EC deliberately provides non-machine-readable papers,” he charged.
In Karnataka, Gandhi alleged that over one lakh votes were fraudulently cast in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency out of a total of 6.5 lakh. “There was ‘vote chori’ of over one lakh votes,” he said, further alleging that the Congress research team had found large numbers of duplicate voters, invalid addresses, and bulk entries in that constituency.
Gandhi said they analysed the voter data of Lok Sabha constituency of Bangalore Central and the Mahadevapura Assembly segment in it from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
He said in the whole Lok Sabha seat, the Congress got 6,26,208 votes while the BJP got 6,58,915, a margin of 32,707.
Gandhi pointed out that while the Congress won six out of seven segments, it lost in the Mahadevapura Assembly segment in which it was defeated by over 1,14,000 votes.
He claimed there was "vote chori" of 1,00,250 votes in the constituency with 11,965 duplicate voters in one assembly segment, 40,009 voters with fake and invalid addresses, 10,452 bulk voters or single address voters, 4,132 voters with invalid photos and 33,692 voters misusing Form 6 of new voters.
The Congress leader also raised broader concerns about the growing disconnect between pre-poll surveys and final results, particularly in states like Haryana and Madhya Pradesh. “Anti-incumbency is something that hits every single party in every single democracy. But for some reason, the BJP is the only party in a democratic framework that basically does not suffer this idea of anti-incumbency,” he said. “Exit polls, opinion polls, our own internal polling were all showing a different picture. Then suddenly, we find the result is in the opposite direction with massive swings.”
Gandhi said the alleged actions of EC amount to a “crime against the Indian Constitution and the Indian flag.”
He asserted that the Election Commission must be reminded of its core duty. “The Congress would like to remind the EC that it is in the business of protecting elections,” he said.
Targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gandhi said, “Modi is a Prime Minister with a slender majority and needed to steal only 25 seats to stay in power. The BJP won 25 Lok Sabha seats with a margin of less than 33,000 votes.”
Reaffirming the constitutional principle of universal franchise, he said, “The foundation of our Constitution is based on the idea that one person gets one vote. When we look at polls, the fundamental thing is how to secure the ‘one man, one vote’ idea. Are the right people allowed to vote? Are fake people being added? Is the voter list true or not?”
He pointed to discrepancies between surveys and final results, saying, “Exit polls go massively wrong, and so do internal surveys.” He further alleged that elections today are “choreographed,” stretching over months, unlike earlier times when polls were conducted nationwide in a single phase, even with limited technology.
“Not giving machine-readable voter lists and disallowing CCTV footage by changing the law convinced us that the EC colluded with the BJP to steal elections,” Gandhi claimed. He also alleged that the Election Commission is attempting to “destroy” evidence of “vote chori” across the country.
Meanwhile, The Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka on Thursday asked Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to share names of electors he claimed were either included or excluded wrongfully from the voters' list of the state along with a signed declaration for the poll authorities to initiate "necessary proceedings" in the matter.
In a letter to Gandhi soon after he levelled allegations of vote fraud, the state poll officer said that during a press conference in the national capital, "you had mentioned about the inclusion of ineligible electors and exclusion of eligible electors in the Electoral Rolls... ."
"You are kindly requested to sign and return the enclosed declaration/oath under Rule 20(3)(b) of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, along with the name(s) of such elector(s) so that necessary proceedings can be initiated."
EC functionaries said the CEO of Karnataka is expecting a signed declaration from Gandhi by this evening.
"If Rahul Gandhi does not believe in what he is saying, then he should stop arriving at absurd conclusions and mislead the citizens," the Election Commission's main handle further wrote on X , attaching the form.
Rahul Gandhi rejected the Election Commission's demand for a signed declaration on his charge of voter list manipulation, saying, “I said it publicly — take it as an oath.” He added the EC hadn’t denied the authenticity of the lists he presented, only asked for a formal affirmation. “They know the truth,” he claimed.
Alleging large-scale electoral fraud, Gandhi warned polling officials of consequences when the Opposition returns to power. “It doesn’t matter how senior or junior you are. One day, the Opposition is going to come to power and then you’ll see what we do to you,” he said. “You are attacking the foundations of our democracy, we will not let that stand.”
The BJP slammed Rahul Gandhi, accusing him of insulting the people of India by calling the party’s election victory a “fraud.” BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad condemned Gandhi’s remarks, calling them “irresponsible and shameless,” and said the Congress leader was attacking the Election Commission out of “frustration and anger” over repeated electoral defeats.
Prasad said Gandhi’s comments amounted to calling the public’s mandate for Prime Minister Narendra Modi fraudulent, thereby insulting voters. He added that people would continue to reject the Congress due to Gandhi’s conduct and repeated attacks on constitutional institutions.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis dismissed Rahul Gandhi’s claim that the 2024 assembly elections in the state were “stolen,” calling the Congress leader’s comments absurd. “Either his brain has been stolen or the chip in his brain is missing. That is why he is making such statements often,” Fadnavis said, reacting to Gandhi’s allegation that the EC colluded with the BJP.