New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday alleged large-scale voter fraud in last year’s Haryana Assembly elections, claiming that 25 lakh fake votes were added to the voter list. He said this amounts to about 12.5 per cent of the state’s two crore voters, meaning one in every eight votes was fake.
Gandhi said many Congress candidates had reported irregularities after the election. According to him, all exit polls had predicted a Congress victory, but the results unexpectedly gave the BJP a win. He also showed a video of Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, who had told the media two days after polling that the BJP had made “arrangements” and would win. Gandhi questioned what these “arrangements” meant, saying it suggested advance knowledge of the outcome.
He further said that, for the first time in Haryana’s history, the results of postal ballots were completely opposite to those from polling booths. “We are questioning the Election Commission and the democratic process in India, and we are doing this with full proof,” he said, claiming a deliberate effort was made to turn a Congress victory into a loss.
Gandhi noted that Congress lost eight seats by narrow margins, including one by just 32 votes. Together, these margins added up to 22,779 votes. “That’s how close the election was,” he said.
He also displayed examples of alleged fake voter entries. In one instance, a photograph of a Brazilian model, available for free on a stock photo website, appeared 22 times in the Haryana voter list under different names such as “Sweety,” “Seema,” and “Saraswati.” Gandhi said this showed that the same photo was used to register votes in multiple booths, calling it evidence of a “centralised operation.”
In another example, he claimed that the same woman’s photograph appeared on 100 voter IDs in a single constituency, and yet another appeared 223 times in the voter lists of two polling booths. “This is why the Election Commission destroys CCTV footage from polling booths,” he alleged, adding that the Commission could easily remove duplicates but “chooses not to because it helps the BJP.” He also claimed that 3.5 lakh voter names were deleted from the list before the polls.
Union Minister Kiren Rijiju criticised Gandhi’s remarks, calling them “fake issues.” He said Gandhi was bringing up Haryana even as polling was taking place in Bihar, accusing him of diverting attention. Rijiju added that differences between exit polls and actual results are common, and the BJP has never questioned the Election Commission when opposition parties win.
He accused Gandhi of trying to provoke young voters but said the youth remain supportive of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.