AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj on Wednesday extended support to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of large-scale voter fraud in the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections, saying “fraud is in the DNA of BJP government".
Responding to Gandhi’s ‘vote chori’ (vote theft) accusation against the BJP and the Election Commission, Bharadwaj cited the Chandigarh mayoral polls earlier this year as an example of electoral manipulation. He said the incident had already exposed the ruling party’s “habitual” approach to undermining fair elections.
He referred to the 2024 Chandigarh mayoral election in which Returning Officer Anil Masih was found guilty of invalidating eight votes that resulted in BJP candidate Manoj Kumar Sonkar’s victory. The Supreme Court later overturned the outcome after physically examining the ballots and declared AAP’s Kuldeep Kumar the rightful winner. The court observed that Masih had made a “deliberate effort to deface eight ballots” cast in AAP’s favour.
Bharadwaj said the BJP’s conduct in Chandigarh reflected a broader pattern. “Whenever they get an opportunity, they don’t think twice before committing fraud,” he remarked, adding, “To say they wouldn’t manipulate the Election Commission is absurd.”
He further alleged that the ruling party was capable of tampering with Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and manipulating voter rolls “wherever they find even the slightest chance.”
“To say that they wouldn’t manipulate the Election Commission is absurd, of course, they would. They are definitely tampering with EVM machines, certainly manipulating electoral rolls, and wherever they find even the slightest chance, they engage in fraud,” he said.
Bharadwaj’s remarks came shortly after Rahul Gandhi intensified his attack on the BJP and the Election Commission, alleging “systemic manipulation” of the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections. Gandhi claimed that 25 lakh fake votes, roughly 12 per cent of the state’s electorate, were cast to turn a Congress victory into defeat.
“Haryana has 2 crore voters, and 25 lakh of them are fake,” Gandhi said at a press conference in Delhi, adding that his team had uncovered 5.21 lakh duplicate voter entries. “One in every eight voters in Haryana is fake.”
The Congress leader presented slides showing alleged voter list discrepancies, including a case where a Brazilian model’s photograph appeared multiple times under different names — “Seema,” “Sweety,” and “Saraswati” — allegedly to cast ballots 22 times.
“All exit polls pointed to a Congress victory in Haryana… A plan was put in motion to convert Congress’ landslide victory into a loss,” Gandhi said.
He also warned that the BJP, with the Election Commission’s backing, would “replicate the same ‘sarkar chori’ (stolen government) playbook in Bihar,” where polling begins tomorrow.
“In Bihar, many voters were deleted from the list. But they can be found at their address,” Gandhi said, questioning the timing of voter roll access for Congress polling agents.
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