New Delhi, Jun 7 (PTI) Rahul Gandhi claimed on Saturday that the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections were a “blueprint for rigging democracy”, drawing rebuke from BJP president J P Nadda, who accused the Congress leader of “cooking up bizarre conspiracies” in his desperation after losing a series of elections.
The Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha alleged in an article in the Indian Express that this poll “match-fixing” would next happen in the Bihar elections and “anywhere the BJP is losing”.
In a post on X, he said, “My article shows how this happened, step by step: Step 1: Rig the panel for appointing the Election Commission. Step 2: Add fake voters to the roll. Step 3: Inflate voter turnout. Step 4: Target the bogus voting exactly where the BJP needs to win. Step 5: Hide the evidence.” Hitting back, Nadda said Gandhi’s article is a blueprint for manufacturing fake narratives, owing to his sadness and desperation of losing election after election.
He said, “Here’s how he does it, step by step. Step 1: The Congress Party gets defeated in election after election due to its antics. Step 2: Instead of introspecting, he cooks up bizarre conspiracies and cries rigging. Step 3: Ignores all facts and data. Step 4: Defames institutions with zero proof.” He added, “Step 5: Hopes for headlines over facts. Despite being exposed time and again, he shamelessly keeps peddling lies. And, he is doing this because a defeat in Bihar is certain.” Democracy doesn’t need drama. It needs truth, Nadda asserted.
Gandhi said fixed elections are a “poison” for any democracy, and the side that cheats may win the game, but it damages institutions and destroys public faith.
In his article, Gandhi alleged that voter turnout figures were inflated.
“Election Commission data show that the number of registered voters in Maharashtra in the 2019 Vidhan Sabha elections was 8.98 crore, which rose five years later to 9.29 crore for the May 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
“But a mere five months later, by the November 2024 Vidhan Sabha elections, the number had leapt to 9.70 crore. A crawl of 31 lakh in five years, then a leap of 41 lakh in just five months,” Gandhi said.
So incredible was this leap that the registered voter total of 9.70 crore was even greater than the 9.54 crore adults in Maharashtra, according to the government’s own estimates, he said in his article.
Pointing to inflation in voter turnout on polling day, Gandhi pointed out that “the polling turnout at 5 pm was 58.22 per cent. Even after voting closed, however, turnout kept increasing more and more. The final turnout was reported only the next morning to be 66.05 percent.” “The unprecedented 7.83 percentage point increase is equivalent to 76 lakh voters – much higher than previous Vidhan Sabha elections in Maharashtra”.
He also pointed to the addition of new voters in only 12,000 booths across 85 constituencies in the state, where the BJP eventually won.
In his rejoinder, Nadda shared an article on the portal ‘OpIndia’ which countered Gandhi’s charges.
The BJP also accused Gandhi of attacking democratic institutions to undermine people’s trust in the electoral process, claiming he was doing so to pre-empt his party’s defeat in the upcoming elections, as he cannot garner public support.
BJP national spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari said the Congress leader was resorting to attacking democratic institutions under a well-planned conspiracy, as he knows that his party is set to suffer defeat in the upcoming Bihar assembly polls.
Gandhi is trying to undermine the trust of people in the electoral process because he is unable to gain public support in favour of his party, Bhandari charged, calling the Congress leader “anti-democracy”.
Slamming Gandhi over his accusations, BJP IT department head Amit Malviya accused the Congress leader of deliberately making repeated attempts to sow seeds of doubt and dissension in the minds of the voters about the poll process.
“It is not that Rahul Gandhi doesn’t understand how the electoral process works. He does very well. But his goal is not clarity; it is chaos. His repeated attempts to sow seeds of doubt and dissension in the minds of voters about our institutional processes are deliberate,” Malviya wrote on X.
The BJP leader pointed out that when Congress wins an election, be it in Telangana or Karnataka, the same system is hailed as “fair and just, “but when they lose, from Haryana to Maharashtra, the whining and conspiracy theories begin, without fail.” “This is straight out of George Soros’ playbook — systematically erode people’s faith in their own institutions, so they can be cracked open from within for political gains,” he added.
“India’s democracy is strong. Its institutions are resilient. And the Indian voter is wise. No amount of manipulation will change that,” Malviya asserted.
Reacting to the Congress leader’s charge, Bhandari said the voter increase between the Lok Sabha and assembly elections in Maharashtra was a regular administrative trend, not a conspiracy.
He termed Gandhi’s claims “inconsistent and scripted”, pointing out that the Congress leader on January 19 claimed one core fake voters were added, then he changed the figure to 70 lakh on February 3 and brought it down to 39 lakh on February 7.
“Not even 1 per cent of Congress candidates formally raised complaints using Form 17C, which is the legal way to challenge EVM data.
“If the Congress party truly believed the results were rigged, why didn’t its candidates approach the District Magistrate with Form 17C data? Because this isn’t about evidence, it’s about narrative warfare,” Bhandari said. PTI KR/SKC/PK RHL
Category: Breaking News
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