SRINAGAR: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday renewed his allegations of electoral fraud, claiming he possesses “open and shut proof” that Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power through “vote theft”, reports The Hindu.
Speaking in Wayanad, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said the Congress was preparing to unveil what he termed a “hydrogen bomb” of evidence that would “completely devastate the reality of the situation”. He asserted that the party’s material would leave “no one in India” in doubt that Modi “stole votes and won the election”.
Gandhi accused Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar of shielding “vote thieves”, pointing to an ongoing Karnataka CID investigation into alleged attempts to delete around 6,000 voters from the Aland constituency. He said the CID had sought information about phone numbers allegedly linked to the deletions and claimed this was a “clear indictment” of the CEC.
“We have shown it in Mahadevpura, we have shown it in Aland,” Gandhi said, referring to previous press conferences where he alleged systematic manipulation of voter lists. “Yesterday we presented black-and-white proof. There can be no bigger indictment of the CEC than this.”
When asked whether his promised revelations would relate to the Prime Minister’s Varanasi constituency, Gandhi declined to give details, telling reporters it was “for you to speculate” while he would “deliver on my job”.
Earlier in the day, Gandhi, accompanied by his sister and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi, attended the inauguration of the Oommen Chandy Memorial Auditorium in Wayanad. Paying tribute to the former Kerala Chief Minister, he contrasted Chandy’s humility with what he described as the arrogance of “very senior leaders at the national level”.
On 18 September, Gandhi had made similar charges in New Delhi, accusing the Election Commission of enabling a systematic attempt to cut minority votes. In response, the Election Commission of India denied the allegations, stating in a press note that “no wrongful deletion of electors in Aland” had taken place and clarifying that “no deletion of votes can be done online by any member of the public”.
