A PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court asking for a Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by a former judge, to probe Rahul Gandhi's allegations of voter list manipulation in the Bengaluru Central constituency during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

The petition seeks a court-monitored inquiry into claims made by Rahul Gandhi that voter lists in Mahadevapura, one of Bengaluru Central’s eight assembly segments were inflated with 1,00,250 “fake” votes, allegedly tilting the result in favour of the BJP.

At the vote Adhikar rally in Bengaluru recently, the Congress leader called vote theft a “crime against the Constitution” and demanded the Election Commission release electoral rolls in a machine-readable format and make polling station CCTV footage public.

On August 7, he had alleged that in Mahadevapura, a constituency with around 6.5 lakh voters, over one lakh votes were bogus.

He broke down the figures: 11,965 “duplicate voters” registered in more than one booth; 40,009 with fake or invalid addresses; 10,452 “bulk voters” registered at the same address; 4,132 entries with missing or blurred photos; and 33,692 names allegedly added through misuse of Form 6, meant for new registrations.

Slides displayed by the Congress MP appeared to show voters registered in multiple booths and in states such as Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.

Some addresses listed breweries or houses with door numbers marked as “0”. One small home allegedly had 80 registered voters.

“If the EC now does not give us electronic voter data — not only of that election but of the last 10-15 years, and if they do not give us CCTV footage, they are partaking in the crime,” the leader of Opposition had said.

The BJP retained Bengaluru Central in 2024 by a margin of 32,707 votes. From Mahadevapura it led by 1,14,046 votes.

The PIL before the Supreme Court has sought the constitution of an SIT under a former judge to investigate alleged manipulation in Bengaluru Central and other constituencies and suspension of electoral roll revision until an independent audit is completed.

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It has also asked for the issuance of binding guidelines to ensure transparency and prevent duplicate or fictitious entries and publication of rolls in accessible, machine-readable formats to allow scrutiny.

The EC provides hard copies and PDF versions of electoral rolls and examines CCTV footage internally.

The BJP has dismissed Rahul Gandhi’s charges as baseless. Its IT cell head, Amit Malviya, said, “Karnataka was under a Congress government during the 2024 elections. If voter list manipulation was even remotely possible, it was the Congress that had both the motive and means, since the Election Commission staff and CEO officers are drawn from the state government.”

Malviya also added a political counterpoint...“Let’s look at Malegaon Central, part of Dhule Lok Sabha seat in Maharashtra, the very state where Rahul is weaving his conspiracy theory. BJP was comfortably ahead in 5 out of 6 assembly segments. But in Malegaon Central, Congress secured 42 votes for every vote of BJP, flipping the result.”