Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has rubbished Rahul Gandhi's 'vote theft' charges through the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and termed them completely misleading.
He pointed out how the Election Commission has repeatedly said if they (opposition) has any complaints, it should be presented before the poll body and there will be a proper investigation.
"They haven't been able to present even a single concrete case. The EC has repeatedly said that if you have any complaints, please bring them to us, we are ready to investigate. Yet, over the same issue, they keep talking about dropping a 'hydrogen bomb' or an 'atom bomb ... But in reality, they haven't even managed to light a small firecracker," he told Network18 Group Editor-in-Chief Rahul Joshi in an exclusive interview.
When asked about Rahul Gandhi's allegations of vote theft in Haryana and Maharashtra, the Union Minister said, "He took out a padyatra for the same, but he found nothing. Now he is discussing elections that are done and dusted. You can't do politics for long by conning people".
West Bengal CM and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee and Tamil Nadu CM and DMK chief MK Stalin have also opposed the implementation of SIR in their respective states.
Targeting the opposition leaders over their objection, Rajnath Singh said that these people are actually violating the democratic rights of legitimate voters. "I want to ask them — those who have come from outside, the infiltrators whose names were on the rolls in Bihar — are now being removed. There are also many people who have permanently moved away from Bihar in search of livelihood or those who passed away. Only their names won't be in the voter list," he said.
Rahul Gandhi's H-bomb
Dropping what he termed 'hydrogen bomb', Rahul Gandhi on November 5 alleged massive vote fraud in the Haryana Assembly polls last year. He alleged that there were 25 lakh fake voters in the electoral rolls of Haryana ahead of the 2024 Assembly elections, which the BJP won. "This means one in eight voters in Haryana are fake, i.e. 12.5 percent," he claimed.
The Congress leader also shared the voters’ list of Haryana's Rai Assembly constituency in which the photograph of a Brazilian female model was used 22 times across 10 booths as voters with different names. "Who is this lady? What is her name? Where does she come from? But she votes 22 times in Haryana, at 10 different booths, and has multiple names: Seema, Sweety, Saraswati, Rashmi, Vilma ... But turns out she is actually a Brazilian model," he said.
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