Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Friday connected the dots between “vote theft” and “land theft”, while questioning the silence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Both the incidents that Rahul introduced into his speeches and posts on social media happened on Wednesday.

“I came to know yesterday that BJP leaders who cast votes in Delhi, also voted in the first phase of Bihar polls,” Rahul said addressing a rally in Banka, without taking any names.

Rahul’s salvo came after it was revealed that former Rajya Sabha MP Rakesh Sinha, a Delhi University teacher, had cast his vote in Begusarai’s Manserpur on Wednesday, nine months after doing the same in the Delhi Assembly polls.

Questions were raised on social media by political parties like the Aam Aadmi Party and Trinamool Congress and fact-checkers sharing two pictures of Sinha that he had shared on his social media. The first one was from 5 February when the Assembly polls in Delhi were held. The second was from Thursday.

Later on Thursday evening, Sinha shared an image of his electors’ photo identity card with the Begusarai address.

“My family home is in Begusarai. I took leave and spent my own money to come to vote in Bihar,” Sinha wrote in Hindi.

Sinha told NDTV that he had deleted his name from the electoral rolls in Delhi, though he continues to teach in the capital.

Since June this year Rahul has been repeatedly flagging the issue of duplicate voters and multiple voters across constituencies in multiple states. Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has also alleged that voters’ id cards with same numbers in different states have been weaponised by the BJP.

Ahead of the Bihar Assembly polls, the Election Commission had pulled up Jan Suraaj Party leader Prashant Kishor for holding two voter I-cards.

“Out of the two crore voters in Haryana, 29 lakh electors are fake,” Rahul said on Friday, repeating what he had said in a news conference on Wednesday. “The BJP indulged in ‘vote chori’ in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Haryana, and now they are trying to repeat it in Bihar. But, I am certain the people of Bihar will not allow this to happen in their state.”

The second incident had happened in Maharashtra, also on Thursday, where the chief minister ordered a probe against a land deal that allegedly favoured the son of deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar.

It was the debacle suffered by the Congress and its alliance partners in last November’s Assembly polls in Maharashtra that prompted Rahul to probe into what the Congress calls voter-roll manipulation.

On the floor of the Lok Sabha Rahul had stated that the Maharashtra elections were manipulated; he has been relentlessly pursuing the issue, which the EC has dismissed as malafide propaganda without specifically answering the questions raised.

“Modi ji, your silence says much. Are you silent because your government needs the backing of the same looters who have snatched the rights of Dalits and the deprived?” Rahul asked in a post made on his X handle on Friday, referring to the Maharashtra case.

On Thursday, Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis formed a committee headed by additional chief secretary (revenue) Vikas Kharge to probe alleged irregularities in a land deal made with a company connected to Rohit Pawar, the son of deputy CM and NCP leader Ajit Pawar.

The plot of land was valued at Rs 1,800 crore in Pune’s Mundhwa area, classified as Mahar watan land, hereditary property of the Mahar community, which cannot be sold without the nod of the government.

“A plot valued at Rs 1,800 crore reserved for Dalits in Maharashtra is sold to the company of the deputy CM’s son for a mere Rs 300 crore. Stamp duty is removed on the deal. Loot and exemption from legal approval,” Rahul wrote in Hindi on his X (formerly Twitter) handle.

“This is land theft committed by a government which was formed through vote theft. They know however much they loot from the people they will regain power through vote theft.”