New Delhi: Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said that the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were rigged and that anywhere between 70-100 seats were manipulated to favour the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The BJP had won the election, winning 240 of the total 543 seats, while the Indian National Congress won 99.

‘EC has disappeared’

Talking at the party’s ‘Annual Legal Conclave’ organised by the All India Congress Committee’s Law, Human Rights and RTI Department at the Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi on August 2, Gandhi said that the Congress had “100%” proof for the rigging of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Saying the election system in India was “already dead”, Gandhi added that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had won with a “very slim majority”.

“Prime Minister of India is Prime Minister with a very slim majority. If 10-15 seats were rigged, it would have been possible. Although our suspicion is closer to 70, 80, 100 seats. We are going to prove to you in the coming few days how that Lok Sabha election was rigged,” he said at the event.

Per a report by The Hindu, Gandhi said he had been suspicious about the election results since 2014, especially as the BJP had pulled off huge victories in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. However, the turning point was the 2024 Assembly election results in Maharashtra, the Congress leader said.

“In the [2024] Lok Sabha, we won the election. And then four months later, we didn’t just lose, we were obliterated. Three formidable parties suddenly just evaporated. We started to look seriously for electoral malpractice. We found that in Maharashtra, one crore new voters appeared between the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections and the bulk of those votes go to the BJP,” he said.

Gandhi also cited the example of one constituency in which “6.5 lakh voters voted, out of which 1.5 lakh were fake”.

“When they [the EC] gave us booth-wise paper voter list, that document [could not] be scanned. Why would the ECI copy-proof, scan-proof the voter lists? We found that 6.5 lakh voters voted, and 1.5 lakh of them were fake. Physical paper we have from ECI. We compared each photo on the list,” The Hindu quoted Gandhi as saying.

He said that the Congress would release the results of its investigation into the election rigging soon, and that the findings were “like an atom bomb”.

“The election system in India is dead,” he added.

Gandhi also said that whoever he had “shown this investigation to” had “fallen off their chair”, and that the EC “does not exist” anymore. 

“It makes it clear that the institution that defends the Constitution has been obliterated and taken over. Now, there is absolutely no doubt that we have proof that will show that the Election Commission of India does not exist. It has disappeared. It has taken us over six months to find this proof. Because the Election Commission does not give us electronic voter lists. It gives us paper-wise voter lists,” he added.

EC refutes election rigging

Following Gandhi’s allegations that the 2024 elections were rigged, the Election Commission (EC) of India posted a “fact check” on its account on social media platform X.

“During preparation of electoral roll for LS-2024, both the Draft & Final Electoral lists were shared with all Political Parties, including INC, and were appealable under Section 24 of RP Act, 1950. Hardly any appeals were filed across all 36 States and Union Territories by INC,” the fact check said.

After the Lok Sabha 2024 elections, only eight petitions were filed by losing candidates of the Congress under Section 80 of RP Act 1951, it added.

Claiming that Gandhi had “repeatedly made unsubstantiated and misleading allegations, including baseless claims” such as “vote chori”, the EC response said that he “has threatened lakhs and lakhs of hardworking election officials across the country”. 

“It appears that these unfounded allegations are intended to discredit their impartial and transparent hard work, attempt to exert undue pressure on the election machinery, and even threaten them without even filing an appeal against electoral roll or even an EP against the conduct of elections as per law,” it said.

The EC said that when it had extended an invitation to Gandhi after his piece in an English newspaper alleging electoral malpractice in the Maharashtra Assembly election last year, there had been “no response from him". 

This is the second time that the EC has refuted the allegations by Gandhi that the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were rigged. On August 1, it responded to a post by the Congress on its social media account, saying that “the statements made [by Gandhi] are misleading, baseless and threatening”.

The EC said that in Karnataka, the voters list was shared with all political parties including the Congress, and not a single appeal had been received against the final voters list. There were 10 petitions filed against the results of the elections which occurred a year ago, but none of these were filed by any Congress candidates who had lost, the EC added. 

In the Congress’s post on its social media account on X that elicited this reaction, Gandhi is heard talking to the press outside parliament that there had been “vote chori”, or vote stealing, in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, and that the Election Commission was involved in this. 

“I am saying this with 100% proof,” he says in the video. “There was suspicion of this in Madhya Pradesh…the Election Commission is not helping us so we did our own investigation.”

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