New Delhi— Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of winning the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections through massive voter fraud, alleging that 25 lakh fake voters were added to the rolls. Gandhi claimed that one in every eight voters in the state was fake and that the Election Commission (EC) played a role in facilitating the BJP’s victory.
Presenting photographs and records of alleged duplicate voters, Gandhi cited several examples to back his claim. He showed a “Brazilian model” whose name, he said, appeared on Haryana’s voter list and who allegedly voted 22 times at a single polling booth in Rai. He also mentioned a woman who reportedly appeared 223 times across electoral rolls, and BJP leaders from Uttar Pradesh who allegedly voted in Haryana.
“There was no election in Haryana, there was a theft,” Gandhi said, accusing the EC of colluding with the ruling party. “This gentleman worked with the BJP to ensure Congress doesn’t win Haryana. Every piece of evidence is from EC records. We’ve just shown what the reality of Indian elections is,” he said.
Gandhi alleged that the EC removed 3.5 lakh Congress voters from the rolls, many of whom had voted in the Lok Sabha elections earlier in the year but were not allowed to vote in the state polls. He also claimed that exit polls had predicted a Congress sweep, but the BJP’s “arrangements” changed the outcome. Referring to a purported video of Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini from October 2024, Gandhi asked what “arrangements” Saini was referring to and why he appeared “so confident.”
He warned that the same “systematic manipulation” could occur in upcoming state elections such as Bihar, calling it a “centralised operation” aimed at “killing democracy and the Constitution.”
The Election Commission strongly rejected Gandhi’s allegations, questioning why no formal objections or appeals were filed by Congress’s polling agents during the election process. “What were the polling agents of Congress doing in polling stations? They are supposed to object if a voter’s identity is in doubt or if the person has already voted. That is the established procedure,” EC officials said.
The EC pointed out that only 22 election petitions are pending before the High Court out of 90 Assembly seats in Haryana. It also questioned Gandhi’s opposition to the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which aims to remove duplicate, deceased, or ineligible voters.
“Is Rahul Gandhi supporting SIR, which removes duplicate, dead and shifted voters, or opposing it?” EC officials asked. They added that “House Number Zero,” which Gandhi linked to BJP workers’ residences, is a standard designation used for locations where local authorities have not assigned house numbers.
EC sources further dismissed Gandhi’s claim that similar “vote theft” could occur in Bihar, noting that the Congress had not filed any appeals during the revision process between August 1 and October 15.
