Vote-theft row: Rahul Gandhi drops his "hydrogen bomb", claims CEC is destroying Indian Democracy

Leader of the Opposition and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi presented some evidence on the alleged "Vote Chori" at a press conference at the Indira Bhawan Auditorium in New Delhi on Thursday, as he accused Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar of protecting the ones he claimed as "destroyers of Democracy." 

While presenting the evidence, he mentioned the attempt to delete nearly 6,018 votes in Karnataka's Aland Constituency. Further claiming about CEC Gyanesh Kumar, "CEC is protecting the people who have destroyed Indian Democracy." 

He said, "This, I am saying with solid proof." 

Citing the vote deletion in Aland, the Congress leader stated, "Aland is a constituency in Karnataka. Somebody tried to delete 6,018 votes. We don't know the total number of votes that were deleted in Aland in the 2023 election. They are much higher than 6,018, but somebody got caught deleting those 6018 votes, and it was caught by coincidence. What happened was that the booth-level officer there noted that her uncle's vote was deleted, so she checked who deleted her uncle's vote, and she found that it was a neighbor who deleted the vote." 

"She asked her neighbor, but they said I did not delete any vote. Neither the person deleting the vote nor the person whose vote was deleted knew. Some other force hijacked the process and deleted the vote..." 

Today's press conference comes about 40 days after Rahul Gandhi had questioned the electoral outcome of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat, when he claimed that over one lakh votes were stolen in the Mahadevpura Assembly constituency during the 2024 Assembly elections. Back then, he had accused the Election Commission of collusion with the BJP, calling it a "crime" against the Constitution. 

Moreover, during the concluding event of his Voter Adhikar Yatra on September 1, Gandhi had hinted that his party would soon come up with a "hydrogen bomb" of Vote Chori revelations, after which Prime Minister Narendra Modi won't be able to show his face to the country. 

In August, Rahul Gandhi had cited some data from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, when he had claimed that over one lakh votes were stolen through manipulation in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency in Karnataka. He had asserted that "vote chori was an atm bomb on our democracy."