Rahul Gandhi’s EVM claims countered by Congress govt survey in Karnataka, BJP reacts

In September, Rahul Gandhi had accused the Election Commission of engineering mass deletion of Opposition supporters from voter list before the 2023 Karnataka election.

• 84.55% in Karnataka believe Indian elections are free and fair, survey finds.
• Trust in EVMs rose to 83.61 percent, up from 77.9 percent in 2023
• Survey contradicts Rahul Gandhi's claims of unfair elections and EVM mistrust

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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was fact-checked by his own party’s government in Karnataka, after a statewide survey released by the Siddaramaiah-led administration found that a majority of citizens believe elections in India are free and fair, with trust in electronic voting machines (EVMs) on the rise.

According to a Deccan Herald report, the survey was commissioned by Chief Electoral Officer V Anbukumar and covered 5,100 respondents across 102 Assembly constituencies in the administrative divisions of Bengaluru, Belagavi, Kalaburagi and Mysuru.

The report was published by the Karnataka Monitoring and Evaluation Authority under the Department of Planning, Programme Monitoring and Statistics. According to the report, 84.55% of the respondents believed that elections in India were conducted freely and fairly. It also found that 83.61% citizens believed that EVMs were trustworthy.

This was a marked increase from 77.9% in 2023, showing that people’s faith in EVMs had increased. “Trust was highest in Kalaburagi division, where 83.24% agreed, and 11.24% strongly agreed, followed by Mysuru division with 70.67% agreeing and 17.92% strongly agreeing," it said.

In September last year, Gandhi had accused the Election Commission of engineering mass deletion of Opposition supporters from voter list before the 2023 Karnataka election.  The campaign began started after Karnataka IT Minister Priyank Kharge claimed there was evidence of vote-deletion attempts.

What does BJP say?

BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla told News18 that the Congress government in Karnataka had delivered a “tight slap" to the lies spread by Gandhi and called him the “leader of propaganda".

“This is the same Rahul Gandhi who has no problems with the Election Commission when Congress wins in Karnataka, Telangana and Himachal, but when he loses elections, he blames the poll body. Dosh deta me nahi beta me hai (The problem lies with the son, not the data) but he does not want to accept it because he is living in a delusion," he said.

According to the BJP leader, Poonawalla said INDIA bloc leaders such as  Omar Abdullah and Supriya Sule had also distanced themselves from Gandhi’s false claims and now Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah had shown him the mirror.