Rahul Gandhi's anti-SIR campaign losing steam? 4 findings that demolish Opposition's 'vote-chori' charge

On Tuesday, the name and picture of Minta Devi, a Bihar resident, took centre stage as the Congress protested against alleged fake voters list.

From taking out protest marches to the office of the Election Commission of India to wearing t-shirts bearing the photo of a Bihar resident, the Congress party has used the demand for a rollback of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the poll-bound state into an issue to galvanise the INDIA bloc which fell silent after the Lok Sabha elections last year.

Stacked against the SIR, a united Opposition, under the leadership of Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, has dubbed the EC initiative an exercise in “vote-chori” (vote theft) by the government that is designed to result in large-scale disenfranchisement.

The national capital on Monday turned into a political flashpoint recently as senior opposition MPs, including Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, were detained during a fierce protest against the poll panel’s alleged bias. Rahul Gandhi declared the fight was “not political” but to “save the Constitution,” while Priyanka Gandhi called the government “cowardly”.

On Tuesday, the name and picture of Minta Devi, a Bihar resident, took centre stage as the Congress protested against alleged fake voters list. Senior opposition leaders, including Congress' Gaurav Gogoi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, were seen wearing t-shirts with Minta Devi's picture and name in the front, and '124 Not Out' embossed at the back.

The leaders had alleged that the woman was registered as a 124-year-old voter, nine years older than the oldest person in the world. She was recorded as a first-time voter born in 1900. The Opposition said her case exposed flaws in the SIR exercise.

However, when Minta Devi discovered that her name and an alleged age of 124 were printed on white T-shirts worn by INDIA bloc MPs outside Parliament, she was not too happy. She also acknowledged discrepancies in her voter details and demanded corrections. According to her Aadhar card, her date of birth is July 15, 1990.

"Who are they (Opposition MPs) to me? Who is Priyanka Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi to me? Who gave them the right to wear t-shirts featuring me?" Minta Devi told ANI. The Siwan District Magistrate’s office also issued a press statement saying that the age shown in Devi’s voter card was due to a “human error” and it was made by her husband while filing the online form.

Mahadevapura vote fraud

During a recent press conference, Gandhi unveiled a granular analysis of electoral irregularities in Bangalore Central's Mahadevapura constituency. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, Congress lost the seat by 1,14,000 votes.

According to Gandhi, there were irregularities either because the names were registered in multiple constituencies, or had fake addresses, or had submitted invalid photographs at the time of registration.

He also alleged that a “bulk voters” resided at single addresses, including 46 voters at House No. 791 in Marathahalli Booth No. 366; 68 at House No. 153 (at brewery 153 Biere Street) in Vinayaka Nagar Booth No. 243; and 80 voters at House No. 35 of Munireddy Garden Booth No. 470.

However, according to The Indian Express, each of the three addresses mentioned by Gandhi corresponded with spaces where many migrants live or work. Also, none of the 194 people whom Gandhi mentioned as staying at these addresses with names in the electoral rolls now lives there, according to IE.

Varanasi's Ward No. 51

The Uttar Pradesh unit of the Congress recently alleged large-scale voter fraud in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Parliamentary constituency Varanasi. The UP Congress posted on social media a voter list from the Kashmiriganj area of Varanasi’s Ward No. 51, claiming that over 50 people were registered as "sons" of a single man, Ramkamal Das.

"See another miracle of the Election Commission in Varanasi! 50 sons are recorded in the voter list in the name of a single person, 'Ramkamal Das'! Youngest son Raghavendra - age 28 years, and eldest son Banwari Das - age 72 years! Will the Election Commission dismiss this discrepancy as just an error or will it accept that fraud is going on openly? " the UP Congress tweeted in Hindi.

The list was from the 2023 Municipal Corporation election roll. It showed more than 50 voters living at address B 24/19, all naming Ramkamal Das as their father.

However, a report by India Today revealed that the address mentioned by the Congress was that of the Ram Janaki Math temple, established by Acharya Ramkamal Das.

The temple’s current manager, Rambharat Shastri, told India Today that the list reflects the centuries-old Guru–Shishya tradition of Hindu monastic life.

"In our ashram, disciples who have renounced worldly life consider their Guru as their father. When a person adopts the life of a sadhu, his worldly family ties are severed, and the Guru’s name is entered in place of the father’s name in all records,” said Shastri.

Fake addresses

Of the one lakh votes that Rahul Gandhi alleged were “stolen” in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura Assembly segment during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, nearly half involved irregularities in electors’ addresses. While the Election Commission is yet to respond to the charge, the anomaly highlights a continuing practice by the poll panel of assigning “notional” house numbers.

Congress analysed the Mahadevapura electoral rolls over six months and found that of 1,00,250 alleged bogus voters, 40,009 had “fake and invalid addresses” and 10,452 were “bulk voters” registered at common addresses. Examples included entries with “0” in the address field, non-existent locations and addresses that could not be verified.

However, a report in The Indian Express revealed that pages of the rolls from 1980, 1983 and 1988 examined only the serial number, name, gender and age in most cases, with house numbers given for some electors. However, some of these house numbers were notional, they were known as “temporary house number”, an official said.

The practice of assigning "notional" addresses became standard across the board during the poll panel's shift to digital records that began in 1998. This, as per the EC, has been to ensure that electors without a permanent or well-defined address — or those who left the field blank — were not excluded from the database.

BJP takes on Opposition

Meanwhile, the BJP on Wednesday turned the tables on Gandhi and the Congress by raising questions on purportedly fake voters in six Opposition-stronghold constituencies such as Rae Bareli, Wayanad, Diamond Harbour, Kannauj, Mainpuri and Kolathur. These constituencies were won by Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Abhishek Banerjee, Dimple Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav and MK Stalin.

“Will all these opposition leaders resign after what they call ‘vote chori’? They want to stop SIR because it will clean up such voter rolls," BJP leader Anurag Thakur said, putting out a 70-slide presentation by the party.