Signing you in

“The BJP and the ‘Vote Chori Aayog’ keep changing their tactics, and they will continue to do so — the goal remains just one: BJP’s victory at any cost, and the end of India’s democracy,” Gandhi said in a post in Hindi on X.

Gandhi, who has repeatedly targeted the Election Commission over the last two years, referred to the Maharashtra Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in 2024, saying, “Maharashtra 2024 — Suddenly, 3.9 million new voters were added between the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections. I said it then, and I say it today: This was vote theft.”

Then he mentioned West Bengal SIR before the Assembly polls, which saw BJP storming to power. “Of the names struck off in the SIR, 91% had to be reinstated after appeals. That means 9 out of every 10 names were wrongly deleted, and added back only after the election. I said it then, and I say it today: This was vote theft,” he said.

Gandhi said that now in Maharashtra, “2.07 crore voters have been removed from the draft list — that’s every fifth voter. Lok Sabha 2024: 9.29 crore; Vidhan Sabha 2024: 9.7 crore; SIR 2026: 7.78 crore… Which list was correct?”

Hitting out at the BJP, he said, “For a government built on vote theft, the people are not important — that’s why this BJP neither listens to the people nor obeys their command.”

Congress president and Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, said that “where it suits the BJP, voters are added. Where it doesn’t, votes are split to perpetrate vote theft”. “The BJP’s conspiracy to hollow out Indian democracy by stealing votes is coming out into the open,” said Kharge. “Instead of acting as the guardian of fair elections, the Election Commission is functioning like the ‘Save BJP’s Chair Commission’,” he said.

“The country is now uniting against vote theft… The nation has understood the BJP’s conspiracy. The thief has been caught… Punishment will surely be meted out for holding democracy captive,” Kharge said in a post on X.

After referring to draft rolls in Maharashtra and Bengal, Kharge said that the “same game is being repeated in Delhi. Voters were increased before the Assembly elections, then names of 4.756 million voters vanished from the draft list, and preparations are underway to issue notices to 3.3 million other voters.”

According to the draft electoral rolls published Monday, around 47.56 lakh of 1.45 crore voters were removed. At 33%, it’s the “highest percentage” of deletions at the draft stage when compared to other states/UTs.

After the draft rolls were published Monday, electors in Maharashtra complained of difficulties accessing and searching the rolls online. The Election Commission said that the name-search facility was still being worked on and would be available by Tuesday evening or Wednesday.