Bihar SIR: 'Will Rahul give his claims and objections only after the elections, as usual?' Election Commission takes a dig at Congress leader

Election Commission sources on Friday questioned why Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has not raised any objection yet. This question was raised after no political party approached the Election Commission for adding or deleting names in the draft voter list of Bihar. Taking a dig at Rahul Gandhi, the sources said that it seems that the Congress leader will give his claims and objections only after the elections instead of giving them now.

According to the latest bulletin of the Election Commission, no political party has approached the Commission with a request to add or delete names since the publication of the draft Bihar voter list on August 1. An official of the Election Commission said, "It seems that Rahul Gandhi, as usual, will give his claims and objections in the SIR (Special Intensive Revision) of Bihar only after the elections."

The Election Commission's jibe at the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha came a day after he was accused of "vote theft" in Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Haryana. The Chief Electoral Officers of all three states have asked him to submit the names of such voters by giving affidavits as per the provisions of the Conduct of Election Rules.

Understand Rahul's allegations and claims.

Earlier, terming the special intensive revision of the voter list as institutional theft, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday claimed that the Election Commission is openly colluding with the BJP to carry out this theft to snatch the voting rights of the poor. He also claimed that SIR has been brought in Bihar because the Election Commission knows that we have caught their theft.

Reiterating his claims, Rahul Gandhi said that more than 1 lakh votes were stolen in the Mahadevpura assembly constituency of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat of Karnataka through five types of rigging. 1,00,250 votes were stolen in Mahadevpura assembly constituency in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. I am sure that there are more than 100 such seats in India. What has happened here has happened in these seats as well. If the BJP had 10-15 fewer seats, Modi would not have been the Prime Minister, and there would have been an opposition coalition government in India.

Rahul said that when he was young, in 1980, he used to go out at night with his sister Priyanka and paste posters for campaigning. He said, 'I understand elections and have been contesting elections myself for the last 20 years. How voting takes place, how polling stations are managed, the voter list, Form 17- I understand all this. Some time ago, we felt that something was wrong. Election results are contrary to the atmosphere. I remember we lost the election in Uttarakhand. I told the candidate to go and find out how many votes we got, where a road show was held. Thousands of people had come to the road show, but no one voted at the polling stations. This was impossible; it cannot happen. Then the results of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh came, and we realized that something was wrong.

Rahul Gandhi also talked about Madhya Pradesh, where the party had won in 2018. He said that later, the Congress government was snatched away. During the Bharat Jodo Yatra, there was a tremendous anti-incumbency wave against the BJP regime, but in 2023, we got only 65 seats. This is impossible. Then came Maharashtra, and we got proof of this for the first time. New voters emerged by magic between the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. Wherever these new voters voted, their votes went to the BJP.

He said that when we got suspicious, we held a press conference with our alliance partner leaders. We asked the Election Commission for the voter list and video recording. They neither gave us the voter list nor the video recording, which raised suspicion. This raised the question in our minds whether the Election Commission is helping the BJP. Is the Election Commission involved in stealing the election? We formed a team and asked them to find out the truth.