Rahul Gandhi on Thursday stuck to his allegations of “vote theft” in Haryana, unfazed by the BJP’s mockery of his claims, made a day earlier when he dropped his long-promised “hydrogen bomb”.
Addressing rallies in Purnea and Araria as Bihar voted in the first phase, Rahul reiterated how a Brazilian model’s picture had featured 22 times on the voter list across 10 booths in the Rai Assembly segment of Haryana.
He alleged the BJP was gaming the system to win elections and urged voters to be vigilant.
Rahul flagged how thousands of names had been deleted from the Bihar electoral rolls, claiming these were mostly Mahagathbandhan voters.
“Wrong additions have been made. You need to be vigilant of this attempt to steal the election in Bihar in the same manner,” he said, appealing in particular to the youth.
Referring to Wednesday’s news conference, Rahul said: “With evidence, I showed that BJP, Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and the Election Commission have together attacked the Constitution. We have shown how the Haryana election was won through vote theft.”
He added: “The BJP was losing the Assembly election, and it won by stealing votes. And, we have shown such proof that neither the BJP nor the Election Commission have a response.”
The BJP continued to demand that Rahul furnish evidence and derided him as
a juvenile.
“The kid’s intelligence has gone too far with lie upon lie... If you have proof, then give an affidavit!” the party posted on its X handle.
A video featuring a Brazilian model named Larissa that was circulating on social media, however, showed her expressing shock and disbelief that an old photograph of hers had made it to Haryana’s electoral rolls.
Larissa posted the video on her Instagram page on Wednesday night, apparently after a reporter had contacted her following Rahul’s news conference.
Without naming the model, Rahul had said her photograph was used in the Haryana polls against names such as “Seema, Sweety and Saraswati”.
Congress leader Supriya Shrinate, fact-checker Mohammad Zubair and others shared Larissa’s reaction on X.
According to an AI translation of her comments in the video, made in Portuguese, she said: “Guys, I’m gonna tell you a joke. It’s too horrible!”
She added: “They are using my pictures for voting in India, portraying me as Indian to fight each other. Look, how crazy this is!”
Larissa, who apparently works as a hairdresser now, continued: “I was young in the photo; I was like 18 or 20 years old....”
As the BJP continued to ridicule Rahul, Shiv Sena (UBT) Rajya Sabha leader Priyanka Chaturvedi said on X that anyone who heard Rahul’s news conference on Wednesday “would tell you that he didn’t literally mean the Brazilian model came and voted”.
Rahul “only meant that her photo was used to create multiple identities with different names and ineligible voters used the loophole to step in and bogus vote”, she wrote.
“Of course ECI has to answer this as to why a stock photo was used, why was it allowed to be registered at various booths and did these ‘registered voters’ Seema, Sweeti or whatever the names given to the same face come to the polling centres to vote.
“But obvious that they won’t and I love how media is making it about photographer name and whether the model visited India herself to vote.”