CEC Gyanesh Kumar

New Delhi: The Election Commission on Thursday dubbed as incorrect and baseless the allegations made by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi that CEC Gyanesh Kumar is protecting “vote chors”.

No deletion can take place without giving an opportunity of being heard to the affected person, the EC asserted.

“Allegations made by Rahul Gandhi are incorrect and baseless. No deletion of any vote can be done online by any member of the public, as misconceived by Gandhi,” it said.

Gandhi accused Chief Election Commissioner Kumar of protecting “vote chors” and people who have destroyed democracy, and cited data from a Karnataka Assembly constituency to claim that votes of Congress supporters were being systematically deleted ahead of elections.

The EC pointed out that in 2023, “certain unsuccessful attempts” were made for deletion of electors in Aland Assembly constituency and an FIR was filed by the authority of EC itself to investigate the matter.

“As per records, Aland Assembly Constituency was won by Subhadh Guttedar (BJP) in 2018 and BR Patil (INC) in 2023 it noted.

Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi: In a bold and scathing presentation titled “Vote Chori”, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, has levelled serious allegations against the Election Commission of India (EC), claiming the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were marred by organised and systemic voter fraud. The 70-slide presentation, prepared by the Congress party, was publicly shared and is being cited by the Opposition as proof of what they describe as “theft of democracy.”

The Congress party claims that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) retained power by stealing votes through deliberate manipulation of electoral rolls and processes, particularly in key constituencies like Bangalore Central.

Key Allegations by the Opposition

According to the presentation, Rahul Gandhi and his party believe the following indicators point to manipulation:

Unusual victory margins for BJP despite visible anti-incumbency.

Discrepancy between opinion/exit polls and actual results.

Sudden spike in voter turnout post 5 PM, which the party finds suspicious.

Massive addition of new voters in just five months — allegedly more than the total number of voters added in five years.

These, the Congress argues, led to public doubts and have now been confirmed, in their view, by a detailed analysis of one key seat.

Focus on Bangalore Central: The Congress Case Study

The Congress has chosen Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat as its main case study to expose what it calls “mass-scale vote theft”.

In this seat, Congress candidate Mansoor Ali Khan lost to BJP’s P.C. Mohan by a margin of 32,707 votes. However, when broken down assembly-wise, the Congress says the defeat was largely due to the Mahadevapura Assembly Segment, where the BJP had an overwhelming lead of 1,15,586 votes. In contrast, in all other segments combined, Congress claims it was leading by around 82,000 votes.

This led the party to launch its own investigation into Mahadevapura.

Congress Investigation: Findings from Mahadevapura

The Congress party says it manually reviewed lakhs of entries from physical electoral rolls — amounting to over 7 feet of paper — and found 1,00,250 fraudulent votes. These were categorised into five types of what they call “Vote Chori”:

Duplicate Voters – 11,965 entries

Voters appearing multiple times on the rolls within the same or different constituencies. One voter, Gurkirat Singh Dang, was reportedly found listed in Mahadevapura, multiple times.

Fake or Invalid Addresses – 40,009 entries

Voters with non-existent addresses, or just symbols like “0”, “-”, or “#”. Many addresses were untraceable.

Bulk Voters in One Address – 10,452 entries

Dozens of voters listed under the same room or commercial property. For example:

80 voters listed in House No. 35

46 voters in House No. 791

68 voters in a brewery called “153 Biere Club”

Invalid or Unclear Photographs – 4,132 entries

Voter photos that were so small or distorted they were unrecognisable. Congress claims these make in-person verification impossible.

Misuse of Form 6 – 33,692 entries

Form 6 is meant for first-time voters. Congress alleges that this was weaponised to register duplicate voters. One example was a 70-year-old woman named Shakun Rani, found registered twice in a span of two months, each with slightly altered photos and names — and both entries had reportedly cast votes.

The presentation claims that these irregularities explain the abnormal margins in Mahadevapura and strongly contributed to Congress’s loss in Bangalore Central.

Why Congress Claims the EC Is Involved

Rahul Gandhi accused the Election Commission of actively evading scrutiny, listing several actions allegedly taken to hide the irregularities:

EC refused to share digital voter rolls, forcing Congress to go through paper records.

EC changed rules to limit access to CCTV footage from polling booths.

Congress wrote four letters demanding voter rolls but received no transparent response.

Allegations that the EC is destroying or has destroyed records critical to verifying these claims.

The party says all of this amounts to deliberate suppression of transparency and accuses the EC of helping the ruling party.

Rahul Gandhi further claimed that the vote theft wasn’t limited to one seat or one state. He highlighted that:

In Haryana, Congress lost eight seats by a combined margin of just 22,779 votes, out of nearly 2 crore votes cast.

BJP won 25 Lok Sabha seats with a margin of under 33,000 votes.

These slim victories, he argues, were enough for the BJP to retain power in 2024.

Political Reactions and Demands

The Congress party is using this presentation to rally public and legal pressure. They’ve raised the issue in:

Parliament (on 3 Feb and 10 Mar 2025)

Press conferences (such as one on 7 Feb 2025)

Editorials published in newspapers

Four written letters to the Election Commission

Rahul Gandhi concluded in the presentation that India’s democracy is under serious threat, claiming the EC is no longer functioning as a neutral body but as an enabler of electoral fraud.

Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress took an early lead over its rivals as counting for the by-election to Kaliganj assembly seat in West Bengal’s Nadia district was underway on Monday.

After the first round of counting, TMC candidate Alifa Ahamed secured 4,545 votes, while her nearest rival, Congress candidate Kabil Uddin Shaikh, backed by the CPI(M), bagged 1,830 votes. BJP nominee Ashis Ghosh was trailing in third position, securing 1,112 votes, election officials said.

Counting began at 8:00 am with the postal ballots. The process is underway peacefully, they added.

The bypoll was necessitated following the sudden demise of sitting TMC MLA Nasiruddin Ahamed in February this year. His daughter, Alifa Ahamed, has been fielded by the party to retain the seat.

Polling for the by-election was held on Thursday, with a voter turnout of 69.85 per cent recorded till 5:00 pm. Barring a few isolated incidents, voting remained largely peaceful.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge

New Delhi: As voting began for the Delhi Assembly polls, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday urged people to vote for those who have done real development in Delhi and not duped people by making false promises.

He asserted that those who want to remain in power by “pretending to fight” for people do not deserve their votes.

“I appeal to the respected people of Delhi to cast their valuable vote. Your one vote will prove to be a symbol of change in Delhi. If Delhi has to be taken forward on the path of development like before, then choose those people who have done real development in Delhi and not duped you by making false promises,” Kharge said in a post in Hindi on X.

“Those who have not taken even a single step for solving the issues of broken roads, dirty water, garbage and polluted air and only made excuses, you should think before pressing the button on the EVM that how much they care about you,” the Congress leader said in his appeal to voters.

“Those who only want to remain in power by pretending to fight for people are not truly deserving of your vote,” he added.

Kharge said Delhi’s brotherhood, harmony, prosperity, happiness and inclusive development are paramount.

He also called on the youth, especially first-time voters to exercise their franchise.

Voting began for the Delhi Assembly elections at 7:00 am. While the ruling AAP is eyeing a third straight term, banking on its governance record and welfare schemes, the BJP and the Congress are looking for a resurgence.

There are around 1.56 crore eligible voters in the capital.

Polling is underway at 13,766 stations across Delhi’s 70 assembly constituencies to decide the fate of 699 candidates.

AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal

New Delhi: AAP national convenor and former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal alleged on Wednesday that the BJP is using the city police to disrupt his party’s poll campaign and intimidate voters ahead of the February 5 assembly elections.

“All the Delhi Police is with the BJP. No one is there for the security and safety of the people. One of the SHOs told me they get direct instructions from the Ministry of Home Affairs to disrupt our rallies,” Kejriwal told a press conference, also addressed by Chief Minister Atishi and senior party leader Saurabh Bharadwaj.

The people of Delhi will have to stand together and give the BJP a strong reply, Kejriwal said. “I am afraid voters might be stopped from casting their votes this time.”

Kejriwal claimed the BJP faces a “historic defeat” in Delhi and that is why its workers are resorting to hooliganism with the support of police.

“Police are facilitating the BJP’s campaign and supporting their workers who are disrupting AAP’s poll efforts,” he said.

Atishi and Bharadwaj echoed similar concerns, with the chief minister accusing BJP workers of threatening AAP volunteers in Kalkaji, where she is seeking a reelection from.

“Ramesh Bidhuri (Atishi’s BJP rival on the Kalkaji seat) is threatening our workers to join the BJP. We will file a complaint with the Election Commission of India (ECI),” she said.

She further alleged BJP workers are attempting to obstruct the AAP’s door-to-door campaigns the constituency.

The Delhi assembly elections are scheduled for February 5, with the results to be announced on February 8. The AAP is aiming for a third consecutive term after securing a sweeping victory in 2020, winning 62 of 70 seats.

New Delhi: The AAP on Sunday released its final list of 38 candidates for the Delhi Assembly polls due in February, with party supremo Arvind Kejriwal to contest from the New Delhi constituency and Chief Minister Atishi fielded again from Kalkaji.

In its bid for a third consecutive term in power in the national capital, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has nominated its senior leaders from their own constituencies.

Ministers Saurabh Bharadwaj, Gopal Rai, Imran Hussain, Raghuvinder Shokeen and Mukesh Kumar Ahlawat will contest the polls from Greater Kailash, Babarpur, Ballimaran, Nangloi Jat and Sultanpur Majra respectively.

In the 2020 election, the AAP had secured 62 of the 70 seats in Delhi, solidifying its dominance in the capital’s politics.

The upcoming polls are expected to be a litmus test for the party’s governance model and its appeal to the electorate.

Omar Abdullah

New Delhi: Opening another point of friction with an important ally, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has dismissed the Congress party’s vehement objection to Electronic Voting Machines, and echoed the BJP’s defence — you can’t accept election results when you win, and blame EVMs when you lose.

“When you get a hundred plus members of Parliament using the same EVMs, and you celebrate that as sort of a victory for your party, you can’t then a few months later turn around and say… we don’t like these EVMs because now the election results aren’t going the way we would like them

Told that he sounded suspiciously like a BJP spokesman, Abdullah reacted with “God forbid!” He then added: “No, it’s just that… what’s right is right.”

He said he speaks based on principles rather than with partisan loyalty and cited his support for infrastructure projects like the Central Vista as an example of his independent thinking.

“Contrary to what everybody else believes, I think that what’s happening with this Central Vista project in Delhi is a damn good thing. I believe constructing a new Parliament building was an excellent idea. We needed a new Parliament building. The old one had outlived its utility,” he said.

He said parties should not contest elections if they do not trust the voting mechanism.

“If you have problems with the EVMs, then you should be consistent in those problems,” he said while replying to a question about whether he thinks that the opposition in general and the Congress, in particular, is barking up the wrong tree by focusing on EVMs.

After its loss in the Haryana and Maharashtra Assembly polls, the Congress has expressed doubts about the EVM’s infallibility and the election outcome. It has demanded a return to the paper ballot.

Abdullah’s comments add to his National Conference party’s unhappiness with the Congress, which was allied with it during the September Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir.

NC officials have privately said that the Congress did not do its bit during the campaigning and left all the heavy lifting to them. Still, the NC won 42 seats in the 90-member Assembly, and the Congress got six.

The chief minister emphasised that electoral machines remain the same regardless of the election outcome, and parties should not use them as a convenient excuse for defeat.

“One day voters choose you, the next day they don’t,” he said and gave his own example of facing defeat in Lok Sabha polls while winning a majority in the September assembly polls.

“I never blamed the machines,” he said.

Ranchi: JMM leader Hemant Soren on Sunday met Jharkhand Governor Santosh Kumar Gangwar and staked claim to form the government, soon after leaders of the INDIA bloc in the state unanimously elected him as the legislature party leader.

He resigned as the chief minister, before staking claim to form the government. He will officiate as the acting chief minister till oath is administered to him on November 28.

“I met the governor. We staked claim to form the government, and handed over support letter of alliance partners to him. He invited us to form the government. The swearing in ceremony will be held on November 28,” Soren told reporters after meeting Gangwar.

Soren, who drove to the Raj Bhavan in his car, said the governor asked him to officiate as the acting chief minister in the interim.

Soren will be sworn in as the 14th chief minister of Jharkhand, which was carved out of Bihar on November 15, 2000. He will be sworn in as the chief minister for the fourth term.

Earlier, leaders and MLAs of the alliance, during a meeting at Hemant Soren’s residence here, unanimously elected him as the coalition’s leader.

Congress’s Jharkhand in-charge and party general secretary Ghulam Ahmad Mir and senior party leader Rajesh Thakur also attended the meeting, besides legislators of the coalition parties.

In a stunning comeback, Hemant Soren’s JMM-led alliance on Saturday stormed to power in Jharkhand for a second consecutive term, winning 56 seats in the 81-member assembly, despite an all-out blitz by the BJP-led NDA which managed only 24 seats.

The majority mark in the state assembly is 41 seats.

Soren retained the Barhait seat by defeating BJP’s Gamliyel Hembrom by a margin of 39,791 votes.

Soren had to resign as the CM in January before being arrested by the ED in a money laundering case.

He is out on bail after he was released from jail on June 28 after nearly five months, as the high court granted him bail in a money laundering case linked to an alleged land scam.

He had resigned as the CM shortly before his arrest on January 31 by the ED.

Hemant Soren, the son of JMM supremo Shibu Soren, began his political career in 2009 as a Rajya Sabha member, but his tenure in the upper House of Parliament was short-lived.

He resigned in 2010 to become the deputy chief minister in the BJP-led Arjun Munda government. However, the alliance collapsed in 2012, leading to President’s Rule in the state. Despite this setback, Soren’s resolve to lead Jharkhand never faltered.

In 2013, Soren became the state’s youngest chief minister at the age of 38, forming the government with the support of Congress and RJD.

However, his first term was short-lived, as the BJP took power in 2014, and Soren became leader of the opposition.

A pivotal moment in his career came in 2016 when the BJP-led government attempted to amend laws protecting tribal land, such as the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act and the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act.

Soren led a massive movement to protect tribal rights, which not only earned him widespread support but also set the stage for his return to power.

In 2019, Soren, with the backing of his allies Congress and RJD, reclaimed the chief minister’s office. His JMM party won 30 seats.

This time, the party won 34 seats, its highest ever tally in the 81-member Jharkhand Assembly, signaling the growing popularity of his leadership.

Mumbai: Nana Patole has stepped down as the President of the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee, days after the party faced a severe defeat in the state assembly elections.

The party’s poor performance in the elections had raised concerns about its leadership and strategy in the state.

The Congress, which contested 101 seats as part of the MVA, posted its worst-ever defeat by managing to win only 16 seats.

Mumbai: Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday described Maharashtra as a beacon of progress and prosperity in the country and appealed to the people to come out in large numbers to vote in the assembly polls to strengthen the democratic system.

Senior BJP leader Gadkari cast his vote at the Town Hall in Mahal area along with his family members and expressed confidence that the “double engine” government (led by his party at the Centre and in the state) will retain power in Maharashtra.

Stressing the importance of voting, he called it a cornerstone of democracy.

“Voting is our fundamental right in democracy. I appeal to the people to come out and vote. Increasing the voter turnout strengthens our democratic system,” he said.

Highlighting Maharashtra’s achievements, Gadkari described the state as a beacon of progress and prosperity in India.

“Maharashtra attracts the highest foreign direct investment (FDI) and boasts of strong industrial development and agricultural growth, including exports. It is a role model for other states,” he said.

“The development of Maharashtra depends on its hardworking people, including villagers, and a capable leadership and government will undoubtedly propel the state forward,” he added.

Gadkari expressed confidence that the ruling Mahayuti in the state, comprising the BJP, Shiv Sena and NCP, will secure a good majority this time.

Asked about the “batenge toh katenge” (divided we fall) slogan raised by some BJP leaders during the poll campaign, Gadkari urged the people to rather focus on the state’s development.

“Leave it aside and focus on voting for Maharashtra’s progress. Development is evident in every corner of the state. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, our government has transformed Maharashtra into a better state. The double-engine government will return once again,” he asserted.

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who also cast his vote in Nagpur, appealed to the voters, specially women, to exercise their franchise.

“It is my appeal to my ‘Ladki Bahina’ to cast vote. In a democracy, you have some expectations from the government. Those who exercise their franchise have more rights to stress on their demands,” he said.

Notably, the state government some months back launched the Ladki Bahin scheme to provide financial assistance to women.

Fadnavis expressed optimism about an increased voter turnout, particularly among women, highlighting improvements at polling stations compared to the previous elections.

He noted that, unlike the parliamentary polls held in the summer month of May, there was no scorching heat now to affect the voter participation.

Fadnavis also addressed the gender gap in voter turnout, saying “Generally, there is a gap of five to six per cent between the male and female voters. I am sure that this time, women will fill the gap by turning up in large numbers at the polling booths.”

The BJP on Tuesday played purported voice notes of Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole and NCP (SP) leader Supriya Sule to allege attempts to encash Bitcoins to influence the state elections, claiming it poses a serious question on the conduct of polls in a free and fair manner.

Commenting on it, Fadnavis called for a comprehensive inquiry to uncover the truth behind the allegations.

“I have already spoken about the Anil Deshmukh fake attack story,” Fadnavis said.

NCP (SP) leader and former state home minister Deshmukh was injured after some persons hurled stones on his car in Nagpur district on Monday evening.

Maharashtra BJP chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule, who too cast his vote in Nagpur, accused the opposition Congress of misleading the people.

“The Congress cheats people with fake manifestos, as we have seen in Telangana, Himachal Pradesh, and Karnataka,” he claimed.

On the incident involving Deshmukh, Bawankule said, “I did not expect this from him. It was unexpected that he would resort to tricks to gain votes.”

“The local police officials have already exposed his tactics. For the past two years, he has been trying to garner voter sympathy,” he claimed.