A constable has a question for a complainant at a police station: “Cow, ox, buffalo, cycle, motorcycle, what has been stolen? Money, jewellery, wife, what is the theft?”

“Vote,” replies the complainant, jolting an officer sitting beside the constable out of his siesta.

Rahul Gandhi posted the video on Saturday, a day before his 16-day Vote Adhikar Yatra starts in Bihar. “Secretly, stealthily. Not anymore, the public has awakened. #StopVoteChori,” he wrote.

With videos like this — both real and AI — as well as memes, the Congress hopes to jolt voters out of their acceptance of things as they are.

Bihar votes this year, and is now undergoing a special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls that demands proof of citizenship. INDIA parties fear the exercise would disenfranchise millions.

In the video, the officer snaps at the complainant: “Are you high in the daytime itself! Are votes ever stolen?”

The complainant replies: “It happens, Sir. Not just one, but lakhs of votes have been stolen. By cutting names from the electoral list, and casting bogus votes, votes are stolen.”

A message is then played: “The theft of your vote is a theft of your rights, your identity!”

A phone number, website and QR code to join the Opposition’s campaign against “vote theft” appear on the screen.

From the same Congress website, people can also download a social media display picture template with the messages “Vote Chori Se Azadi” and “Stop Vote Chori”.

Party spokesperson Pawan Khera said Rahul’s Yatra would cover 1,300km along a counter-clockwise route, beginning in Sasaram and ending in Patna on September 1.

The “claims and objections” phase of the SIR will be in progress during this time. The draft rolls were published on August 1.

Bihar Opposition leader Tejashwi Yadav and CPIML Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya have confirmed their participation in the Yatra.

Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and LoP in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi during a meeting with AICC General Secretaries, in-charges & frontal heads, in New Delhi.

The Election Commission (EC) has responded to a Congress AI video on X that has the message: “Join us from August 17 to remove the vote thieves from power.”

The EC said: “This video is Al generated and not real. It is a clear attempt to mislead the people of Bihar.”

Rahul has alleged voter list manipulation also in other parts of India, claiming the Mahadevapura Assembly segment in Bengaluru had more than 1 lakh “bogus voters”
during last year’s general election.

Like the police in the video, the police in Congress-ruled Karnataka have shown little appetite for probing the allegation.

An EC statement said: “It seems that some political parties and their booth-level agents did not examine the electoral rolls at the appropriate time and did not point out errors, if any, to SDMs/ EROs, DEOs or CEOs. Recently, some political parties and individuals are raising issues about errors in electoral rolls, including (those) prepared in the past.”

It said that “had these issues been raised at the right time through the right channels” — that is, during the “claims and objections period of that phase” — “it would have enabled the... SDM/ EROs to correct the mistakes, if genuine, before those elections”.

The poll panel has called a news conference on Sunday.