NEW DELHI: With just hours to go before the Bihar Assembly elections, Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday dropped what he called the “much-awaited hydrogen bomb,” accusing the Election Commission of India (ECI) of colluding with the BJP to steal the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections in its favour.
Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters, the Congress leader alleged that 25 lakh votes were stolen in Haryana through the use of 5.21 lakh duplicate voters, 93,174 invalid voters, and 19.26 lakh bulk voters. Haryana has a total of two crore voters.
“We have crystal-clear proof that 25 lakh voters in Haryana are fake — that they either don’t exist, are duplicates, or are designed in a way that allows anybody to vote. One in eight voters in Haryana is fake — that’s 12.5%,” he said, adding that a plan was in motion to convert the Congress’s landslide victory into a loss, despite all exit polls pointing to a convincing win for the party.
“We have what we call the ‘H Files’, and this is about how an entire state was stolen. We suspected that this wasn’t happening in individual constituencies, but at the state and national levels,” he said.
Gandhi alleged that the Chief Election Commissioner and the two election commissioners colluded with the BJP to ensure its victory in Haryana, claiming that “they are in partnership” with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
He further said that “Operation Sarkar Chori” was launched to convert what should have been a landslide Congress victory into a loss in Haryana.
To substantiate his claim of fake voters, Gandhi cited the example of a woman who appeared 223 times on the voter list across two booths. He also mentioned a Brazilian model whose photograph appeared 22 times under different names in ten booths.
“This is proof of a centralized operation. The lady is a Brazilian model. What is a Brazilian person doing on the voters’ list in Haryana?” he asked.
Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah of destroying the country’s institutions, Gandhi said he wanted the Gen Z and the youth of India to understand that elections were being “stolen” and that democracy was at a crossroads. “This is a fake election. The current Haryana government is a fake one,” he said.
The Congress MP further alleged that 3.5 lakh voters were deleted before the Haryana Assembly elections, mostly Congress supporters. He also invited several Haryana voters whose names were removed from the voter list to speak on stage.
“The EC can delete duplicate voters, as several such entries appear in the same constituency and booths. But the EC won’t do it because it wants to help the BJP. The EC is also destroying CCTV footage from polling booths,” he alleged.
Claiming that the BJP had made “arrangements” to steal the Haryana election, Gandhi said, “For the first time in Haryana’s history, postal votes were different from the actual votes. Normally, postal and actual votes are directionally similar. Here, the Congress got 73 seats in postal votes, while the BJP got 17. It has never happened before.”
Gandhi also played a video of Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, who, two days before the counting, stated that the BJP would win and that “we have a system in place.”
“Please notice the smile on his face and the ‘arrangement’ he is talking about. This was two days after the election, when everyone was saying that the Congress was sweeping the polls,” Gandhi said.
When asked whether the Congress had trained its booth agents to monitor “vote theft,” Gandhi replied that the very integrity of the election was at stake.
“If the voter list is corrupted and we are given it at the last moment, there’s no point. We can keep training agents, but legally, these fake voters are allowed to vote. If the voter list is tampered with and the EC is colluding, political parties can’t do anything,” he said.
Responding to a question on legal action, Gandhi said, “The highest court — the Supreme Court — is watching. They have seen all the presentations. We are doing this in front of the media, and the data we cite is sourced from the EC itself.”
Contesting Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s claim that house number ‘0’ was used for homeless people, Gandhi said the real reason was to make voters untraceable.
“We decided to verify the CEC’s claim. We found that one such house, belonging to a man named Narendra, could not be traced. There are hundreds of such examples. The purpose of house number ‘0’ is to make it impossible to locate voters. After voting, they disappear. The CEC was lying openly to the people. This is a deliberate method to complicate verification,” he said.
Gandhi also pointed out that there was a house with 500 registered voters, but upon inspection, no one was living there.
“The rule says that if a house has more than ten voters, there must be ground verification. However, that hasn’t been done here,” he added.
The Congress MP alleged that thousands of voters were registered in both Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Citing the example of a BJP sarpanch in UP who is also a voter in Haryana, he claimed there were thousands of such cases involving BJP supporters.
When asked about a joint strategy by the INDIA bloc to protest against the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in opposition-ruled states such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and West Bengal, Gandhi said that the “integrity of the election” was the fundamental issue.
“We will coordinate with other opposition parties and oppose the move. But the fundamental issue is the integrity of the election. If the voter list is flawed, then the election is flawed. If the voter list is a lie, there is no democracy. Please understand the world you are living in,” he said, adding that maintaining the voter list’s integrity is not the opposition’s responsibility.
“The EC has put the onus on political parties. It’s not our job. The EC’s job is to conduct free and fair elections,” he said.
The BJP dismissed Rahul Gandhi's allegation as "false and baseless" and accused the Congress leader of raising questions on the Election Commission to hide his failures and defame the country's democracy.
Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Kiren Rijiju, in a press conference, accused Gandhi of "playing games" in collusion with "anti-India" forces to defame the country.
He said Gandhi goes abroad during elections, does not meet people on the ground, and cries foul after his party loses.
He derided him as someone who cannot work hard or live among the people.
If there is any irregularity with the voting, then one must flag it with the EC or approach the court. "But he never does it," he said about the Congress leader.
