New Delhi, Nov 5: The Haryana assembly polls last year were “stolen”, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged on Wednesday, citing electoral list data to claim that 25 lakh entries were fake and the Election Commission colluded with the BJP to make the party win.
The elaborate plan included a Brazilian model whose photograph was used 22 times in 10 booths in the Rai assembly constituency during the 2024 assembly elections, the former Congress president said at a press conference during which he put up a presentation to back his claim.
The poll panel, Gandhi added, launched ‘Operation Sarkar Chori’ to convert the landslide victory of his party into a loss in the state
The Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said he is questioning the Election Commission and the democratic process in the country and is doing so with 100 per cent proof.
Gandhi alleged that Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar and the two election commissioners colluded with the BJP to ensure the ruling party’s victory in Haryana and claimed “they are in partnership” with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Congress leader also alleged that the CEC lied to the people of India when he stated that “house number zero” is given to homeless people and that is the reality of zero number houses.
House Number zero has been given by booth-level officers where no house number is allotted by municipalities/panchayats. CEC Kumar had said crores of people have ‘zero number’ in their house addresses because the panchayat or the municipality has not given the number to the house.
Addressing the media at the Indira Bhawan here, Gandhi cited the electoral list of Haryana to claim that 25,41,144 were fake voters with multiple examples of duplicate voters, invalid addresses and bulk voters.
“One in eight voters in Haryana are fake and despite that the Congress loses by 22,779 votes which was the difference in eight seats,” Gandhi said.
“I was in shock, I simply could not believe what we found. I asked the team to cross check multiple times. I want young people, Gen Z to understand this clearly as your future is being stolen,” Gandhi said.
“Why is the Election Commission not removing duplicates? It is because if it does so, it would result in fair elections and it doesn’t want fair elections,” Gandhi said.
All polls, Gandhi asserted, had pointed to a Congress victory in Haryana with the five top exit polls predicting a Congress sweep.
“The other thing that was surprising was that for the first time in Haryana, the postal votes were different from the result. In postal ballots, Congress got 73 seats while the BJP got 17 seats,” he said.
Gandhi claimed that thousands of people associated with the BJP voted both in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.
Showing the photograph of the woman he claimed was a Brazilian model, he said she is “one of 25 lakh such records in Haryana which is proof of a centralised operation”.
He claimed that a plan was in motion to convert a landslide victory of the Congress into a loss in Haryana.
According to Gandhi, ‘Sarkar Chori’ has destroyed India’s democracy and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) issue is the latest weapon.
This system of ‘vote chori’ is now being implemented in Bihar, he said a day ahead of the two-phase Bihar polls.
He said his party will coordinate with opposition parties against SIR but democracy in the country has been murdered, alleges Rahul Gandhi.
Gandhi also played out a video of now Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini saying two days before counting that the BJP would win and also making this statement — “We have a system in place”.
“We suspected, once we did Mahadevapura and Aland (in Karnataka), that this is not happening in just one constituency but this is being done at the state and national level,” Gandhi said
Election Commission officials trashed Gandhi’s vote manipulation allegation as unfounded, saying no appeals were filed against the electoral rolls in Haryana.
They also questioned the silence of Congress’ booth agents who failed to flag voters who had cast vote multiple times in Haryana assembly elections in October 2024.
In September, Gandhi had accused CEC Kumar of protecting those who “destroyed democracy” and cited data from the Aland assembly constituency in Karnataka to claim that votes of Congress supporters were being systematically deleted ahead of elections.
In August, Gandhi, citing data from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, had claimed that over one lakh votes were “stolen” through manipulation in Mahadevapura assembly segment in Karnataka.
The BJP won 48 seats in the 2024 Haryana assembly polls. The Congress, which was predicted to win by many exit polls, won 37 seats. The INLD won two seats while independent candidates bagged three in the 90-member Assembly. (PTI)
