Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday raised his “vote chori” allegation in the Lok Sabha, accusing the BJP and the Election Commission of colluding to destroy the idea of India and claiming that the process of appointing poll bosses had been undermined to favour the current ruling establishment.

Later, in a post on X, he said India was not only the biggest but the greatest democracy in the world. “The BJP and the Election Commission are colluding to destroy our democracy and rob people of their voice,” the Congress leader said.

In Parliament, the Opposition accused the Election Commission of functioning as a government agency and renewed its demand for a return to paper ballots.

The BJP dismissed Rahul’s allegations as being “full of lies” and said he deliberately spoke in English to project India’s poll process as a fraud before the world.

Speaking in the Lok Sabha during the debate on the contentious special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, Rahul cited the example of a voter whose name allegedly appeared 22 times in Haryana’s list. He accused the government of an “institutional capture” of the poll panel.

“A Brazilian woman appeared 22 times in the Haryana voter list. Another woman’s name appeared 200 times. The Haryana election was stolen. I have said this again and again and again. But the Election Commission hasn’t answered my questions,” he told the House.

Rahul questioned why the Narendra Modi government was so intent on removing the Chief Justice of India from the panel empowered to select the poll body chief and asked why a law was passed to ensure that no election commissioner could be punished for the actions taken in their official capacity.

“Why was the Chief Justice of India removed from the panel that selects the
election commissioners? Do we not believe in the Chief Justice? Why do PM Modi and Amit Shah decide who will be in the Election Commission?” he asked.

Speaking about the panel to appoint the chief election commissioners and election commissioners which now has only the Prime Minister, home minister and the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha as its members, Rahul said: “I sit in that room. It is a so-called democratic decision. On one side, there is Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah. On the other side, the leader of the Opposition. I have no voice in that room. What they decide is what happens.”

Referring to the immunity granted to the election commissioners, he said: “Why would the Prime Minister and the home minister give this gift of immunity to the election commissioner?”

Rahul called for providing machine-readable voter lists to all parties one month before elections, taking back the law that allows destruction of CCTV footage after 45 days.

“When you destroy the vote, you destroy the fabric of this country, you destroy modern India, you destroy the idea of India,” he said, gesturing towards the Treasury benches.

The government managers dismissed the Opposition’s “vote theft” allegations as an excuse to mask their own failures to earn the people’s trust.

“The Congress, during its rule, engaged in several instances of vote chori. The 1971 Rae Bareli Lok Sabha election was one of the worst examples of electoral malpractice,” junior law minister (independent charge) Arjun Ram Meghwal told the House.

The debate will conclude on Wednesday.

Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee claimed the SIR was aimed at deleting genuine voters.

Congress MP Manish Tewari argued that the EC had no legal and constitutional right to conduct the SIR and demanded that the exercise be stopped.

“There is no provision for the SIR in the Constitution or in law. This is just a right to the EC that if there is anything wrong with the electoral roll of any constituency, it can correct it for reasons that need to be recorded in writing and made public,” Tewari claimed.

He added: “If you have to do the SIR, then do it separately in constituencies where there is a problem with the electoral roll after recording the problems in writing.... I would like to ask the government where the reasons in writing are.”

Tewari said the government should return to paper ballots, given the public concern over the alleged manipulation of electronic voting machines. He said many developed countries had returned to ballots and wondered why India couldn’t do the same.