New Delhi, :
With 2.07 crore of 9.78 crore electors in Maharashtra being deleted in draft rolls during Special Intensive Revisions (SIR) exercise by the Election Commission, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday alleged that the BJP and the “Vote Chori Aayog” of keep changing their tactics, and they will continue to do so for “BJP’s victory at any cost”.
In a post on X in Hindi, Rahul Gandhi said, “The BJP and the ‘Vote Chori Aayog’ keep changing their tactics, and they will continue to do so — the goal remains just one: BJP’s victory at any cost, and the end of India’s democracy.”
The former Congress chief, who has critical of the poll panel over the last two years, referred to the Maharashtra Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in 2024, and said, “Maharashtra 2024 — Suddenly, 3.9 million new voters were added between the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections. I said it then, and I say it today: This was vote theft.”
The Rae Bareli MP also referred to the West Bengal SIR exercise before the Assembly polls earlier this year, where BJP stormed to power by defeating the Trinamool Congress.
“Of the names struck off in the SIR, 91 per cent had to be reinstated after appeals. That means 9 out of every 10 names were wrongly deleted, and added back only after the election. I said it then, and I say it today: This was vote theft,” he said.
While talking about the Maharashtra’s draft voter rolls, he said, “2.07 crore voters have been removed from the draft list — that’s every fifth voter. Lok Sabha 2024: 9.29 crore; Vidhan Sabha 2024: 9.7 crore; SIR 2026: 7.78 crore… Which list was correct?”
Slamming the BJP, the Gandhi scion said, “For a government built on vote theft, the people are not important — that’s why this BJP neither listens to the people nor obeys their command.”
Even Congress president and Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge slammed the poll panel and the BJP, and said that “where it suits the BJP, voters are added, where it doesn’t, votes are split to perpetrate vote theft”.
“The BJP’s conspiracy to hollow out Indian democracy by stealing votes is coming out into the open,” said Kharge. “Instead of acting as the guardian of fair elections, the Election Commission is functioning like the ‘Save BJP’s Chair Commission’,” Kharge said.
“The country is now uniting against vote theft… The nation has understood the BJP’s conspiracy. The thief has been caught… Punishment will surely be meted out for holding democracy captive,” Kharge said.
After referring to draft rolls in Maharashtra and Bengal, Kharge said that the “same game is being repeated in Delhi. Voters were increased before the Assembly elections, then names of 4.756 million voters vanished from the draft list, and preparations are underway to issue notices to 3.3 million other voters.”
The remarks came after Maharashtra’s draft roll, released on Monday, recorded 78.86 per cent enumeration, with more than 2.07 crore voters left out.
Last week, the chief ministers of Karnataka and Telangana had sought more time for the exercise, warning that eligible voters could otherwise be excluded due to low enumeration rates, documentation problems, or insufficient time to respond.
