New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on November 5 dropped the “hydrogen bomb” which he had been claiming would dwarf the evidence that he presented earlier to point at attempted manipulation of electoral rolls in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura and Aland. 

Gandhi alleged that out of an estimated 2 crore electors in Haryana, nearly 25 lakh electors are fake, including those whose names have been duplicated multiple times, bulk voters in a single address, BJP supporters who are listed both in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, a those whose photos have been blurred or duplicated innumerable times. 

He said that the Haryana mandate was “stolen”, as evidence of manipulation in electoral rolls showed, by the Election Commission of India that Gandhi said was “lying to the people of India openly”. 

Earlier, the Congress leader had shown that there were systematic and centralised attempts to illegally delete electors in Karnataka and add them in the electoral rolls, possibly through a software programme, in Maharashtra.

Today, Gandhi made a powerpoint presentation named 'H-Files', referring to the “vote chori” – vote steal – in Haryana. He said that his team found 5,21,619 duplicate electors, 93,174 invalid addresses of electors, and 19,26,351 electors who are registered in bulk in different houses, totalling 25,41,144 allegedly fake electors. 

Gandhi said that such manipulation in the electoral rolls cost the Congress the Haryana assembly polls in 2024, as it trailed behind the BJP by a margin of merely 22,779 votes in eight assembly constituencies. If it had won those, it would have been in the majority. Gandhi said that the total difference of votes between the BJP and the Congress was merely 1.12 lakh at the end, the difference more likely a result of fake votes.

He gave stark examples, one of which was allegedly a photo of a Brazilian model whose photo is registered in the Haryana electoral rolls 22 times in 10 booths with multiple names. Against the model's face are names like Seema, Sweety, Saraswati and more. Similarly, he showed a photo of a woman which is present against 223 electors in two polling booths, all with different addresses, names and age.

“This is proof of a centralised operation. One in every eight voters is fake (in Haryana), nearly 12.5%,” Gandhi said. 

Gandhi said that his team also found 1,24, 177 electors in the Haryana rolls with fake photos – either names are common or photos have been blurred. He claimed that the EC had a software that can rectify these aberrations but has not corrected them as yet. He alleged that the EC was deliberately manipulating the electoral rolls to help the BJP.

Gandhi invoked Guru Nanak on his birth anniversary, and said that he was the apostle of truth and has been his inspiration. “What I am going to say here is 100% truth,” he said. 

He said that after the Congress found malpractices in electoral rolls in Mahadevpura and Aland, it suspected that a similar modus operandi to corrupt electoral rolls may be afoot at the state and national level. 

“We were getting a lot of complaints from Haryana. Because our predictions all went upside down. So, we decided to zoom into details. Haryana was also one of the cases where postal votes went in a completely different direction than actual votes,” Gandhi said, adding that Congress swept the Haryana polls with 73 seats, leaving the BJP with only 17 when postal votes were counted. 

“When I first saw the information, I simply couldn’t believe what I saw. I told the team to check and cross-check it from multiple sources. What you see today is a result of that process,” he said. 

He added that the Election Commission has stopped giving access to Form 6 and 7 (for addition and deletions of new voters) after his presentations on Mahadevpura and Aland.

He also noted that the party’s estimate of wrongful deletions was nearly 3.5 lakhs in Haryana alone. He alleged that the EC was “helping the BJP” by not being transparent and deliberately keeping the electoral rolls corrupt. 

Gandhi started off by showing a video clip of Haryana chief minister Nayab Singh Saini, who is seen claiming that the BJP will form a government of its own before counting began, as it has already made “arrangements” for its victory. Similarly, he showed other BJP leaders claiming to bring electors from other states to vote where they are not registered as electors. 

“I am questioning the EC, questioning the democratic process in India…EC is in partnership with the PM and HM [home minister], who have destroyed the democratic foundations of this country. Systematic methods have been evolved by the PM and HM to kill the constitution, kill our democracy,” Gandhi said. 

Gandhi said that if the EC wanted to rectify these errors, it could have used a software program to delete duplicate voters, electors with fake and blurred photos. “But it is not doing so. The reason is that it is helping the BJP…This is the reason the EC is insistent upon deleting CCTV footage (of voting),” he said. 

Gandhi also said manipulation of electoral rolls, as seen in Haryana, is being done in a targeted way to delete Congress voters. He played video clips of four such voters whose families were deleted from the electoral rolls for the 2024 Haryana assembly polls, although their names were present in the rolls for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. 

He went on to show a BJP sarpanch, Dalchand, whose name, along with his son’s, figured in both the Haryana and UP electoral rolls. Gandhi claimed that there are thousands of such people whose names have been included in the rolls of both these states, most of whom are BJP supporters or local leaders. 

He also gave the example of one Narendra whose address was listed as “House Number Zero”, but who was found by the Congress team in a village. He said that Narendra and many others whose houses were listed as such go on to debunk the CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s earlier claim that only “homeless” people were marked as living in “House Number Zero”. 

He also claimed that given that the EC is in cahoots with the Modi government, he expects that he will have to do a similar presentation once the Bihar assembly polls are over. He had invited four electors of Bihar who claimed that their names and those of their family members were struck out in the recently-concluded SIR exercise. Gandhi implied that the SIR exercise was undertaken to indiscriminately delete opposition voters.

He said that as an opposition leader he is raising awareness about corruption in electoral rolls, as it shakes the very foundations of our democracy, but only the EC can ensure the integrity of the electoral rolls and the electoral process, in which it has failed. 

EC responds

The EC immediately put out an X post in which it tried to refute claims made by Gandhi. It argued that all electoral rolls were shared by political parties, and over 4 lakh claims and objections were resolved with political parties before Haryana assembly elections were held. It said that no complaints were raised within the prescribed time frame. 

However, Gandhi had said in his presentation that the whole verification exercise was done over many months, which required substantial leg work by the Congress team, and it was therefore nearly impossible to raise complaints on time. 

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