Rahul Gandhi cited evidence from a Karnataka constituency to allege voter list manipulation, claiming it was part of a deliberate strategy to steal the mandate in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
BY Navin Upadhyay
New Delhi, August 7 — In a dramatic press conference held in Delhi, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi made explosive claims that the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were rigged in favour of the BJP through manipulation of electoral rolls. Describing the revelations as an “atom bomb,” Gandhi presented what he said was documentary evidence from Mahadevapura assembly segment of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency, calling it a case of “bhayankar chori” (massive theft) of votes.
Citing internal research conducted by the Congress party, Gandhi claimed that out of 6.5 lakh registered voters in Mahadevapura, over one lakh were either duplicate entries, voters with invalid addresses, or bulk registrations—raising serious questions about the integrity of the electoral process.
“This is not a small discrepancy. We found more than one lakh suspicious entries in just one segment,” Gandhi said at the press conference.
The Bangalore Central seat witnessed a tightly fought contest in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Congress candidate Mansoor Ali Khan led through much of the counting day, but eventually lost to BJP’s P.C. Mohan by a narrow margin of 32,707 votes.
According to Rahul, the voters list in the said constituency had been deliberately manipulated to either delete genuine voters or include fake entries, disproportionately benefiting the ruling party. He alleged the Election Commission was complicit or negligent in allowing the fraud to occur.
Gandhi claimed that out of approximately 6.5 lakh votes polled in Mahadevapura, over 1 lakh votes were “stolen”, enabling the BJP to secure a disproportionate victory in the Bangalore Central parliamentary seat.
LIVE: Press Conference – #VoteChori | Indira Bhawan, New Delhi https://t.co/BlZwacZpto
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 7, 2025
“There was a theft of exactly 1,00,250 votes. This wasn’t an accident — it was a systematic operation,” Gandhi stated, presenting what he described as months of data-backed analysis by the Congress’s internal election monitoring team.
Congress Sweeps Segments, Yet Loses Seat: The Mahadevapura Puzzle
According to Gandhi, although the Congress won six of the seven assembly segments in Bangalore Central, it suffered a decisive defeat in Mahadevapura — the only segment it lost — by a margin of 1,14,000 votes. The party polled 6,26,208 votes overall, while the BJP secured 6,58,915 votes, tipping the final tally in its favor.
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“The Mahadevapura segment was rigged — it completely overturned the democratic will of the people,” Gandhi said.
He further broke down the alleged fraudulent votes:
11,965 duplicate voters
40,009 entries with fake or invalid addresses (including “House No. 0”)
10,452 voters registered to the same address (bulk entries)
4,132 voters with invalid or mismatched photographs
33,692 instances of misuse of Form 6, which is used for adding new or first-time voters
‘Seven Feet of Paper, Zero Transparency’
Gandhi also slammed the Election Commission for providing only paper copies of the electoral rolls, despite repeated requests for digital data. He held up a towering stack of printed voter lists, nearly seven feet high, to underscore the logistical challenge of manually auditing the data.
“If I want to know if a person voted twice or has been listed more than once, I have to manually scan through every sheet. This took us six months. Had we been given electronic, machine-readable data, we could have found the fraud in 30 seconds,” Gandhi said.
He accused the EC of intentionally hindering scrutiny by supplying data that cannot be processed digitally or through Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
LIVE: Press Conference – #VoteChori | Indira Bhawan, New Delhi https://t.co/BlZwacZpto
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 7, 2025
“This is deliberate. They know that if we get electronic access, the fraud will be exposed instantly. So they bury it in reams of unusable paper,” he added.
Protests Planned, ECI Pushes Back
The allegations come just days before a massive protest rally planned by the Congress in Bengaluru, led by Rahul Gandhi himself. The protest, originally scheduled for August 5, has been postponed to August 8 due to official mourning in the state.
Meanwhile, the Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer has responded by demanding a signed affidavit from Gandhi substantiating his claims and asked why the Congress failed to file an official complaint during or immediately after the elections.
‘Fake Voters, No Anti-Incumbency Against BJP’: Rahul’s Broader Charge
Gandhi also questioned a deeper trend he believes is undermining Indian democracy: the alleged immunity of the BJP to anti-incumbency.
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“In every democracy, ruling parties suffer from anti-incumbency — it’s natural. But for some reason, only the BJP escapes this. Is that credible? Or is something else at play?” he asked.
He further alleged that fake voters are being added strategically to select constituencies to swing results in the BJP’s favor.
Rahul Gandhi pointed to the stark mismatch between exit polls and final results in states like Haryana and Maharashtra, where most pollsters had predicted Congress wins or tight contests.
“What happened in Haryana and Maharashtra? Every exit poll gave us the edge. Yet the final results veered off completely, with massive unexplained swings,” Gandhi said.
While the BJP retained power by allying with regional parties, its seat share in the Lok Sabha dropped to 240, well below the halfway mark. The Congress-led INDIA bloc finished with 235 seats, of which Congress alone won 99.
Gandhi insisted that the fight is no longer just about seat counts but about protecting democracy itself.
“This is not about one seat or one party. This is about the fundamental integrity of our electoral system,” he concluded.
“This is just the beginning. We have proof, and we will place it before the people. Democracy has been murdered,” Gandhi said, adding that further revelations would follow.
LIVE: Press Conference – #VoteChori | Indira Bhawan, New Delhi https://t.co/BlZwacZpto
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 7, 2025
“This is not a small issue. This is an attack on Indian democracy,” Rahul said, holding up pages of documents that he claimed showed names deleted, fake entries inserted, and systematic tampering aimed at tilting the outcome in the BJP’s favour,” he said.
Rahul Gandhi said the Congress party had conducted a detailed analysis of the voters list in the unnamed constituency and found thousands of anomalies. “We have identified patterns—entire blocks of voters removed, duplicate entries created, and many names shifted without any voter knowledge. This was not a clerical error. This was intentional,” he declared.
He referred to the exposé as an “atom bomb” he had been warning about for days, adding that today’s revelations were “just the beginning.” He said the party would be releasing evidence from more constituencies in the coming days.
महादेवपुरा में इस तरह से 100250 वोट की चोरी हुई
सोचिए कितना खतरनाक खेल हुआ है।
Duplicate voters: 11965
Fake Invalid Voters:40009
Bulk Voters in Single Address: 10452
Invalid Photo : 4132
Misuse of Form 6 : 33692
#VoteChori pic.twitter.com/3HVT54qiXI
— I.N.D.I.A गठबन्धन (@savedemocracyI) August 7, 2025
Gandhi directly accused the Election Commission of failing in its constitutional duty. “The Election Commission cannot escape accountability. This level of fraud cannot happen without complicity or criminal negligence,” he said.
The press conference comes at a time when the opposition bloc INDIA is sharpening its attacks on the BJP-led government, especially over concerns related to electoral transparency and democratic institutions.
Rahul Gandhi’s Specific Allegations Against the Election Commission
. Refusal to Share Voter List Data
Gandhi alleged that the Election Commission denied access to the full and updated voter lists, preventing parties from verifying voter identities and flagging duplicates.
2. Destruction of CCTV Footage
He claimed the EC took the shocking decision to destroy polling booth CCTV footage in Maharashtra, even as concerns were raised about a suspicious surge in votes after 5:30 PM.
3. Use of Non-Machine-Readable Documents
According to Gandhi, the EC deliberately shared voter rolls in a format that does not support Optical Character Recognition (OCR), making it impossible to analyse large data sets digitally and quickly.
4. One Crore New Voters Added in Maharashtra
He highlighted that between the state assembly and Lok Sabha elections, over one crore new voters were added in Maharashtra—without adequate explanation—calling it an “engineered” expansion.
5. Sudden Voting Pattern Reversals
Gandhi pointed out implausible swings in election outcomes, where alliances that lost heavily in Vidhan Sabha polls went on to sweep the Lok Sabha elections, raising questions about data manipulation.
6. Alleged EC-BJP Collusion
He said there was “reasonable certainty” that the Election Commission was working in tandem with the BJP to manipulate electoral outcomes.
7. Massive Voter Fraud in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura Segment
Gandhi specifically cited Mahadevapura, part of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat, where he claimed over 1 lakh fake, duplicate, or invalid entries were found among 6.5 lakh voters.
He alleged that these included:
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Duplicate voters listed multiple times
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Voters with invalid or unverifiable addresses
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Bulk voters registered in clusters
8. Suspicious Addition of Voters Across Karnataka
He said the Congress’s internal analysis revealed a pattern of sudden, bulk additions of voters in multiple constituencies across Karnataka, often in BJP-stronghold segments.
He claimed these additions were strategically timed and often lacked proper verification, calling them part of an orchestrated plan to “steal” close contests.
