The Election Commission of India on Thursday dismissed all the allegations leveled by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi regarding “vote theft”, which mentioned that no voter’s name could be removed by anyone through online.
The Election Commission said in a statement, “The allegations made by Rahul Gandhi are wrong and baseless. No vote can be removed online by any member of the public, as Rahul Gandhi has maintained a misconception. No vote can be removed without giving the affected person a hearing opportunity.”
The Election Commission also said that the allegations made by Rahul Gandhi against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar are baseless and wrong.
Earlier in a press conference at the Congress headquarters, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha claimed that he has “10 percent evidence” that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar is giving protection to “vote thieves”.
He said that some people are using a centralized method through software and taking the form of real voters and removing their names from the voter list. However, the Election Commission has said that some “unsuccessful efforts” were made in 2023 to remove some votes and a complaint was filed on the order of the Election Commission.
The Election Commission said, “In 2023, some unsuccessful attempts were made to remove the names of voters in the Aland assembly constituency and an FIR was lodged by the ECI authority to investigate the case itself.”
The ECI said that Congress leader BR Patil won the assembly elections in 2023, while BJP’s Subadh Gutter won in 2018.
Earlier, in the press conference, Rahul Gandhi alleged that an attempt was made to remove the names of more than 6 thousand voters in Aland constituency in Karnataka.
He said, “No one tried to erase 6018 votes in Alind, Karnataka. We do not know how many votes were erased in 2023 elections, but someone was caught. It was caught by coincidence in most of the crimes. It happened that the booth level officer saw that his uncle’s vote had been erased.”
Opposition parties have been repeatedly claiming that the Election Commission of India, along with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is removing and connecting fake votes with the voter list in various elections. The Congress leader has claimed that there has been fraud in Maharashtra assembly elections and various assembly constituencies including Mahadevpura assembly constituency in Karnataka.
