1 Lakh 'New' Voters, Fake Addresses: Rahul Gandhi's 'Vote Chori' Data Explained

Escalating his war on the EC, Rahul Gandhi held a briefing toprovide data of alleged voter fraud in Bangalore.

Duplicate Voters, Fake Addresses: Rahul Gandhi's 'Vote Chori' Data Explained

(Photo: Congress)

In a major escalation of his criticism, Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha (LoP) Rahul Gandhi on Thursday, 7 August levelled grave allegations against the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), claiming they "colluded to steal" the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as well as the Maharashtra and Haryana Assembly elections.

Presenting what he described as concrete “proof” of electoral malpractice, Gandhi alleged that votes were manipulated in at least “five different ways” in Karnataka’s Bangalore Central constituency, where the BJP won by a margin of 32,707 votes.

The Congress, he claimed, had conducted an internal investigation focused on the Mahadevapura Assembly segment, a key part of the Bangalore Central seat. The findings, presented by Gandhi, form the basis of the party’s accusation of large-scale voter manipulation.

'Duplicate Voters, Fake Addresses in Mahadevapura'

Giving numbers from the Mahadevapura Assembly segment of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency, Gandhi claimed over 1 lakh votes were “stolen” through systematic manipulation in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Highlighting that the Congress had won all but one of the Assembly segments in Bangalore Central. In 2024, the BJP secured a victory margin of 1,14,046 votes in Mahadevapura.

“That number jumped out at us,” Gandhi said. “Why is the BJP’s entire margin concentrated in one constituency? So we looked deeper into Mahadevapura and found that 1,00,250 votes were stolen — in five different ways — from a total of 6.5 lakh votes cast.”

Gandhi further claimed that in the party's investigation, they found 11,965 duplicate votes, 40,009 votes tied to fake or invalid addresses, 10,452 votes from bulk registrations at single addresses, 4,132 votes with invalid photos, and 33,692 instances of Form 6 misuse.

(Photo: Congress)

Alleging that there are cases where one person appears in four different polling booths and that thousands have voted multiple times across different states, Gandhi then went ahead to give details of one Gurkirat Singh Dang who allegedly appeared on rolls in four separate booths within the constituency.

“Same name, same address, same person — in four polling booths,” Gandhi said. “And it’s not just a few cases. There are thousands like these in just one Assembly segment.”

(Photo: Congress)

(Photo: Congress)

Fake Addresses, Misuse of Form 6

Explaining over 40,000 fake addreses in the same constiuency, Gandhi held up examples from the voter rolls to point out entries with “House no 0” as the address. “Father’s name in one case ilsdfhug, in another dfoigoidf,” he said, reading directly from the lists.

(Photo: Congress)

He then detailed alleged instances of bulk registrations at single addresses. “This is House no 35… There is a single-room house where 80 voters are shown living: different names, different families. We sent people to check, and they got beaten up,” he said.

(Photo: Congress)

Gandhi cited a commercial property. “This is a brewery — 153 Beire club — in whose address there were 68 voters. This is a commercial establishment… nobody lives there. When we go and ask them, where are these people, who are these people… nothing… never heard of them,” he said.

(Photo: Congress)

“These are of three types: either an address that doesn’t exist, or the house number is zero, or the address can’t be verified. They have fake details in columns like father’s name, etc,” he said.

He further alleged that Form 6 was misused to fraudulently register older individuals as first-time voters.

(Photo: Congress)

“There is a lady called Shakun Rani, a 70-year-old, who got registered as a new voter twice. She has been registered twice in two months. And she votes twice in two different booths. She came in using Form 6 for the first time on 13 September, 2023, and then she did it again on October 31, 2023. And then the beautiful thing is, she actually votes twice, or somebody votes twice for her," he said.

(Photo: Congress)

'More Voters Added in Maharashtra in 5 Months Than in 5 Years'

Gandhi also alleged that the EC has been evasive of providing the voter lists from Maharashtra.

"What is the crux of the problem? The voter list is the property of this country. The Election Commission absolutely refuses to give us the voter list. We requested a machine-readable Maharashtra voter list, but the EC rejected our plea. Machine-readable formats are key because we need soft copies to analyze the data," he said.

(Photo: Congress)

He further said that there was a question about massive voting after 5:30 PM in Maharashtra.

(Photo: Congress)

"But our people and alliance partners knew that didn't happen in the polling booths. There were no large lines after 5:30 PM. These two things made us believe with reasonable certainty that the Election Commission of India was colluding with the BJP to steal elections," he alleged.

(Photo: Congress)

"In Maharashtra, more voters were added in 5 months than in 5 years, which was a staggering fact. Additionally, the number of voters added exceeded the entire population of certain areas, which was surprising. Then, there was a huge jump in voter turnout after 5 pm," he added.

What the Election Commision Said

Following Gandhi's briefing, the Election Commission of Karnataka asked Gandhi to provide details of the allegations "under oath".

"It is understood that during a Press Conference held today, you had mentioned about the inclusion of ineligible electors and exclusion of eligible electors in the Electoral Rolls cited at Para 3 above. 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," they said.

The EC firther said that as far as the conduct of elections is concerned, election results can be questioned only by a way of Election Petition before High Court.

'Haven't Denied My Claims': Rahul Amplifies Attack on EC

Asked about EC's declaration, Gandhi said that the EC had not denied his allegations and only asked him to provide them under oath.

"I'm a politician. What I say to the people is my word. I'm saying it publicly to everybody, so take it as an oath. This is their data, and we're displaying their data. This isn't our data; it's Election Commission data. Interestingly, they haven't denied the information. They haven't said that the voter lists I'm talking about are wrong. Instead, they're saying, 'Will you do it under oath?' Why don't they say the lists are wrong? Because they know the truth, and they know that we know they've done this across the country," he said.

"They (EC) don't attack me. They're too scared to attack me. They haven't taken any action against me because they know I'm telling the truth. They know this is bulletproof," he added.