EC sources refute Rahul Gandhi’s Haryana ‘vote chori’ allegation: ‘No appeal filed against electoral rolls’

Rahul Gandhi

After Congress leader Rahul Gandhi levelled “vote theft” allegations in the Haryana Assembly polls during a briefing on Wednesday, the Election Commission (EC) sources questioned why the party’s polling agents failed to raise complaints during voting.

“If someone allegedly voted more than 200 times in two booths, why was no objection raised by the polling agent of the Congress?” EC sources asked, according to a CNN-News18 report. They stated that such issues should have been flagged immediately at the polling stations rather than after the results.

The sources noted that after finalising the voter list, copies were shared with every political party to ensure transparency and provide a chance to flag duplicate names.

“After the voter list was finalised, a copy of it was given to all parties. Why were the issues of duplicate names not flagged? Why was no appeal made?” they questioned, maintaining that the election authorities followed due process throughout.

The response came after Gandhi cited electoral list data from Haryana to claim that 25 lakh entries were "fake" and the assembly polls last year were "stolen", as he accused the Election Commission of colluding with the BJP to make them win.

Gandhi alleged that the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and the two election commissioners colluded with the BJP to ensure its victory in Haryana and claimed that "they are in partnership" with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"All polls pointed to a Congress victory in Haryana. The five top exit polls said Congress is sweeping. The other thing that was surprising was that for the first time in Haryana, the postal votes were different from the result. In postal ballots, Congress got 73 seats while the BJP got 17 seats," he said.

During the presser, Gandhi showed a picture of a woman who appears on the voter list 22 times in 10 booths in the Rai assembly constituency, and said this shows that this was a 'centralised operation'. He claimed that the picture of the woman used for multiple entries is from Brazil.