The Election Commission of India’s response to Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi’s latest allegations are like saying that “there was an attempted mass shooting, but since no one died, no need to find the shooters or their network,” according to former IAS officer Kannan Gopinathan.
Gopinathan had quit the civil services in August 2019 in protest against the abrogation of Article 370 and the halving of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories.
“Dear @ECISVEEP, your response on the massive, targeted voter deletion attempt cannot be, "There was an attempted mass shooting, but since no one died, no need to find the shooters or their network",” Gopinathan posted on his X (formerly Twitter) handle on Friday evening, a day after Rahul hurled his latest allegations at the poll panel.
The Congress leader had on Thursday accused the Election Commission of withholding evidence from Karnataka police, who Rahul said were probing thousands of fraudulent applications for name deletions from the state’s electoral rolls, filed by people impersonating genuine voters.
Rahul said that unknown people had used mobile phones registered in other states to file 6,018 name-deletion applications relating to Karnataka’s Aland Assembly constituency.
The poll panel denied the allegations, saying no names had been deleted and that an FIR had been filed.
"No deletion of any vote can be done online by any member of the public, as misconceived by Gandhi," the poll panel wrote in a post on X.
“This isn't about unsuccessful attempts,” Gopinathan wrote. “It's about WHO did it, WHO funded them, WHERE else they operated, and HOW deep this electoral sabotage network goes. 6,000 fraudulent and targeted deletion attempts looks clearly like an organized racket. An organised attack on democracy. And an organised attack on the country. Do not trivialise this by a file and forget FIR!”
Rahul on Friday doubled down on his allegations.
In a post in Hindi on X on Friday, he said: "Wake up at 4 a.m. Eliminate two voters in 36 seconds, Then go back to sleep - this is how vote theft happens! The election watchman stayed awake, watched the theft, and protected the thieves.”
