Rahul attacks CEC Gyanesh Kumar, backs claims with hard evidence

If his first ‘vote chori’ (vote theft) press conference raised alarm on the mass presence of dubious voters in electoral rolls, Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s second media interaction on the issue, on Thursday (September 18), was meant to address how such tampering with voter lists was being done.

Though by his own admission, the latest exposé was not the promised “H-Bomb” (Hydrogen Bomb), which Rahul claimed was still under preparation and would be “released soon”, the allegations he made on Thursday were extremely damning.

‘Attempt to delete 6,018 voters’

As with his first vote theft presser, Rahul once again chose an Assembly segment from Karnataka – Aland, which falls in Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s home district of Gulbarga but is part of the Bidar Lok Sabha constituency – as his principal case study.

Also read: Rahul alleges CEC Gyanesh Kumar is protecting 'those destroying democracy'

Rahul said an “attempt was made to delete 6,018 voters” from Aland, presumably ahead of the 2023 Karnataka Assembly polls, but was “thwarted because of the coincidence of a Congress booth level agent (BLA) being alerted by a party worker (one Babita, who was also present at the presser) of her uncle’s vote being deleted... the BLA raised a complaint and, as luck would have it, the vote chori got exposed”. Interestingly, the Congress’s Karnataka veteran BR Patil had lost the Aland constituency to the BJP’s Subhash Guttedar in the 2018 Karnataka Assembly polls by a margin of just 697 votes but wrested it back in the 2023 elections by a margin of 10,348 votes.

For good measure, the Lok Sabha’s LoP also made a fleeting mention of the Rajura Assembly segment in the Chandrapur Lok Sabha constituency of Maharashtra, and claimed that though the issue here was of dubious additions of over 6,500 voters compared to the case of an attempt to delete over 6,000 voters in Aland, the “modus operandi for both operations is exactly the same”.

Given that the technical aspects of his claims could be hard to grasp for a layperson, Rahul backed the allegations with specific examples.

Unlike Aland, which has largely been a Congress stronghold through the years, the Rajura seat in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur has shuttled between the Congress and the BJP for the last four elections, with the victory margin always being slender. In the 2019 Assembly polls, the Congress’ Subhash Dhote had won the seat by a margin of 2,509 votes but in the 2024 polls, he lost the seat to the BJP’s Deorao Bhongle by 3,054 votes.

Direct attack on CEC

Asserting that the alleged tampering with the voter lists “across the country” was being done as per a “centralised criminal operation”, Rahul claimed that his team working on the vote chori exposés had discovered “100 per cent proof of systematic targeting of millions of voters for deletion across the country”. The Congress leader also made a direct attack at Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, alleging that the CEC was “protecting the murderers of democracy”.

Also read: EC upgrades guidelines; EVMs to show candidates' colour photos

At his first vote chori presser last month, Rahul had laid out allegations, backed by documents accessed from the Election Commission (EC), about the existence of over one lakh dubious voters in the electoral rolls of the Mahadevapura Assembly segment in Karnataka’s Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency. On Thursday, his focus was on explaining how such mass-scale tampering with voter rolls was being given effect.

The Lok Sabha’s LoP claimed that “someone” was using a centralised and computerised system that identifies booths where the Congress has historically performed well against its electoral rivals. Next, the “centralised system” picks up “the voter at serial number one” on that particular booth and then uses the said individual’s voter credentials to either generate complaints for deletion of other voters on the same booth or to generate claims for voter addition. Under the rules for voter deletions, claims for voter deletion on any given booth can be raised by another individual registered as a voter on the same booth.

Testimonies of people

Given that the technical aspects of his claims could be hard to grasp for a layperson, Rahul backed the allegations with specific examples. Even more significantly, he also presented testimonies of people whose voter credentials were used without their knowledge to delete genuine voters. This was a significant departure from his earlier press conference and, perhaps, a well-planned move to quell the possibility of individuals highlighted in his press conference later refuting his charge.

Also read: BJP seizes on Afridi's praise of Rahul to target Congress leader

It may be recalled that following his revelations regarding the Mahadevapura Assembly segments, various individuals Rahul had highlighted as “dubious voters” had publicly refuted his charge. The BJP’s social media team and many mainstream media networks had then circulated these videos widely to discredit Rahul’s claims.

This time round, the Congress leader came armed with a ‘testimony on video’ by one Godabai whose voter credentials were, according to her “used without her knowledge” to delete voters. Similarly, Babita, a Congress worker from Aland constituency whose name had been deleted from the voter list was present at the press conference held at the party headquarters, Indira Bhavan in New Delhi, along with Suryakant, the man whose voter credentials were allegedly used to raise requests for deleting several people from the voter lists. Suryakant told reporters that he had no knowledge of how his credentials were used and said that he had “got to know from Babita that my name was used to delete her uncle from the voter list but I had not raised any request for deleting or adding any voter”.

Alleging that “someone was employing a software to delete or add voters” and that “this is being done at scale and at a centralised call centre level”, Rahul then proceeded to site what he claimed were “mobile numbers used to generate the request for voter deletion” in Aland. Noting that “none of these numbers are registered in Karnataka”, Rahul said “these numbers were used to generate OTPs (required by the EC’s computerised system to log in and generate claims for voter deletion/addition).”

‘Voter deletion at 4 AM’

Since complaints raised on the EC’s system are time-stamped, Rahul also pointed out a specific case wherein a person had “raised a claim for deleting two voters at 4 AM within a matter of 36 seconds”. Pointing out that raising claims on the EC website require filling up of a form with multiple details, the Congress leader pointed out two specific instances wherein one individual had allegedly managed to “delete 12 voters in a matter of 14 minutes” and another case where “one person deleted two voters in just 36 seconds”. This, Rahul alleged, was “humanly impossible” and said “it shows this is being done at scale using a computerised system”.

Training his guns at the CEC, Rahul said the Karnataka CID had filed an FIR way back in 2023 against a complaint of fraudulent voter deletions but “in the past 18 months, the CID has written 18 letters to CEC Gyanesh Kumar asking him to provide destination IP, device destination ports and OTP trails” of claims for voter deletion but had “received no reply to date”. The last letter from the Karnataka CID to Gyanesh, Rahul said, was sent earlier this month.

The EC, as was expected, has called Rahul’s allegations “incorrect and baseless” but its rebuttal now raises more question than it seeks to answer.

Pointing out that of the 10 booths where “maximum number of voters were deleted” as many as eight were “Congress strongholds which we had swept in 2018”, Rahul said his team researching the vote chori claims had figured that a bulk of voter deletions were always of people who belonged to the SC, ST, minority or OBC communities, which the Congress leader said “are our main voters”.

EC's response to Rahul's allegations

Rahul said he was laying out “absolute solid proof that Gyanesh Kumar is protecting that ‘someone’ who is responsible for murdering democracy” and that “if this isn’t the case, he should reply within a week to the Karnataka CID and provide all the data they have been seeking for the past 18 months”.

The EC, as was expected, has called Rahul’s allegations “incorrect and baseless” but its rebuttal now raises more question than it seeks to answer. While the EC claimed that “no deletion of any vote can be done online by any member of the public”, it also admitted that “in 2023, certain unsuccessful attempts were made for deletion of elections in Aland Assembly constituency and an FIR was filed by the authority of ECI itself to investigate the matter”.

What the EC decided to stay silent on, however, was on why it had chosen to, as per Rahul’s claim, not cooperate with the Karnataka CID’s ongoing probe, especially if the investigation was into a complaint the poll panel had itself initiated.

Whether the EC comes up with more rebuttals on Rahul's latest claims remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the Congress leader has claimed that his "H-bomb" on vote chori is "coming soon".