A Brazilian model was among those who had purportedly upset the Congress’s applecart in the Haryana Assembly election held last year.
That’s what Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, carrying on with his “exposé” of the vote theft in Indian elections, implied as he dropped the “Haryana files” at a time when Bihar is readying for the first phase of elections on Thursday in 121 Assembly constituencies.
“One in eight voters of Haryana is fake. Of the 2 crore voters in Haryana, at least 25 lakh are fake, possibly there are more,” Rahul Gandhi said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
He said possibly the number of fake voters is higher.
“This is a system. This has now been industrialised and can be used in any state. The same will happen in Bihar. You may ask why we can’t stop it. The voters’ list is given to us at the last minute before the elections,” he said.
In the midst of his presentation, an image appeared on the screen with a question in Hindi written with Roman alphabets. “Kaun hai yeh [Who is she]?”
“Her name appears as Seema, Sweety, Saraswati… 22 times. In 10 booths she has voted in the Rai Assembly seat in Haryana. This photograph is not of a woman from Haryana or India. She is a Brazilian model,” Rahul told the assembled media.
“This is a centralised operation. Not the handiwork of a BLO [booth level officer]. This was done by people above the BLOs’ rank.”
As he had done previously for Bangalore Central’s Mahadevpura and Bidar’s Aaland, Rahul came with tonnes of papers – all purported voters’ lists – which he claimed exposed the mal intent of the Election Commission, the custodian of electoral democracy in India.
According to the data prepared by Rahul’s team after combing through the electoral rolls, there are 5,21, 619 duplicate voters in Haryana, around 90,000 with invalid addresses and 19 lakh bulk voters.
“After we accessed the Form 6 for Mahadevpura, the EC has stopped giving access. We cannot give the numbers of how many voters were deleted in Haryana. From our experience in Aland we suspect there was a 30 per cent misuse of the forms,” Rahul alleged.
“In the case of 25 lakh voters we have crystal clear proof they are fake, duplicate, do not exist, or were designed in a way that anyone can vote, like blurry images in the identity cards.”
He said: “One photo, one Assembly and 100 votes. They created space for anyone to vote from other parts of Haryana or from outside Haryana. Here is a woman. Her photograph appears on hundreds of records. Why? Vikram Singh. Is she a man or a woman? A woman’s photograph appears in nine places. Same picture, different names, sometimes men, sometimes women, different addresses, different ages. The image keeps reappearing in the voters list.
“She appears 223 times in two different booths. She can vote any number of times,” he claimed.
Rahul said the EC can easily identify the number of times the woman whose image appears in different names and different addresses or the people who actually cast the votes against those voters’ cards.
“EC has the data – how many times she has voted. EC must tell us how many times she has voted. They can check it in the CCTV footage. This is the reason why EC destroys CCTV footage so that these people are not caught,” Rahul said.
He presented a clipping from a media conference addressed by Haryana chief minister Nayab Singh Saini days before the Assembly election results were announced.
The clipping showed Saini saying, “BJP is forming the government. We have all the vyavastha [system] in place.”
“This is the vyavastha that he was talking about,” Rahul alleged. “Operation government theft was implemented. A plan to derail the landslide victory of the Congress in the state.”
Rahul claimed there were 1,24.177 entries with fake photos.
“Mamta, Durga, Sangeeta, Manju. Anybody can say mera naam Durga hai and cast their votes. Here is one [person’s name withheld] who has voted in multiple booths. All the EC needs to do is put a software to detect multiple entries with similar names, addresses and photographs and delete those. If they remove names of duplicate voters, elections will be fair. The EC does not want fair elections,” Rahul claimed.
Names of two BJP functionaries at the panchayat level elected in Uttar Pradesh also allegedly featured in the Haryana electoral rolls.
“A BJP zilla parishad member from Palwal in Haryana has 66 voters in the same address. The CEC says homeless people are given the ‘zero’ address. We have caught his lies. The CEC is lying to the people of India. Was ground verification done in these cases?” Rahul asked.
He claimed 3.5 lakh voters were deleted between the 2024 Lok Sabha and the Assembly polls held in November last year.
Few such voters who were disenfranchised told the Congress representatives their names were deleted before the Assembly polls.
“There was not an election but a theft in Haryana. This gentleman [CEC Gyanesh Kumar] colluded with the BJP to ensure Congress could not win in Haryana. The EC is in partnership with the prime minister and the Union home minister. This is the reality of Indian democracy.
“The PM, HM, the chief minister of Haryana are not legitimately in government,” he declared.
Four male voters and a woman from Bihar’s Jamui whose names were deleted after the special intensive revision in the state also appeared in the news conference to speak for themselves.
The ruling BJP reacted furiously, with Union minister Kiren Rijiju first off the block.
“The games that Rahul Gandhi is playing in collusion with anti-India forces will never succeed,” Rijiju was quoted as saying. “If there is irregularity they should file a petition with EC and approach court, but Rahul Gandhi never does it. Rahul Gandhi is trying to provoke Gen Z, but youth of this country is wise and stands by PM Modi.”
In a “fact-check” post on X (formerly Twitter), the Election Commission rejected Rahul Gandhi’s claims as "unfounded allegations" intended to exert undue pressure on the election machinery and even threaten poll officials.