Maharashtra Congress workers staged a protest in Mumbai against the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Friday, echoing Rahul Gandhi’s fresh allegations of large-scale electoral fraud.
Yesterday, the former Congress president claimed that democracy in India was under threat and called for judicial intervention. He alleged that between the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections in Maharashtra, over one crore new voters were added to the rolls in just five months, a spike larger than the addition made in five years.
CCTV Footage Destruction Raises Eyebrows
Gandhi also accused the ECI of destroying CCTV footage from polling booths, despite questions over a suspicious surge in voting after 5.30 PM in certain areas. He alleged this was part of a cover-up, as Congress workers stationed at booths reported no such spike in voter turnout.
According to Gandhi, the Election Commission has refused to provide the voter list in an accessible format, instead handing over stacks of printed paper — deliberately formatted to block Optical Character Recognition (OCR) scanning.
“This is why we are being given data like this — so it is not analysed,” he said, adding that his team spent six months manually checking records for just one constituency.
Karnataka Example: “Vote Chori” in Mahadevapura
To highlight his claims, Gandhi cited findings from the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency in Karnataka. He alleged over one lakh fraudulent votes were cast in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls there, including:
11,965 duplicate voters
40,009 fake/invalid addresses
10,452 bulk voters (same address)
4,132 invalid photos
33,692 misuse of Form 6
In Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat, Congress won six out of seven segments but lost Mahadevapura by over 1,14,000 votes — a margin Gandhi says was inflated by “vote chori.”
