Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday alleged that “vote theft” had given the confidence to home minister Amit Shah to claim that the BJP would continue to rule for the next 40-50 years.
The accusation was made at a rally in Bihar, as the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha resumed his over-two-week-long Voter Adhikar Yatra against the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the poll-bound state after a day’s break.
“A few years ago, Amit Shah made this statement. Not once, but repeatedly, he said that the BJP government would last 40-50 years. I thought, how can this person say this, how does he know that the BJP will rule for the next 40-50 years?” Rahul told the rally at Madhubani in north Bihar.
The Congress leader said politicians can’t be sure as to who the people would vote for, and so such a statement from Shah appeared strange initially. “Then, this statement seemed strange. Now the truth has come out before the country. Amit Shah was able to say this because these people steal votes,” Rahul said.
Rahul did not clarify, but he appeared to be referring to Shah’s address at a closed-door national executive meeting of the BJP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. As the then BJP president, Shah was quoted as telling the leadership that the party would win the upcoming Lok Sabha polls with a bigger margin and “no one can dethrone the BJP for the next 50 years”. In the Lok Sabha last month, Shah had slammed the Opposition and said they would remain out of power for the next 20 years.
The Congress MP from Kerala’s Wayanad, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and Telangana chief minister Revanth Reddy joined the Voter Adhikar Yatra on Tuesday.
Rahul and other Mahagathbandhan leaders continued to accuse the ruling BJP of attempting “vote theft” through the ongoing voterroll revision.
Rahul claimed that echoes of “vote chor” had spread across Bihar and soon the country would say the same. He said the ongoing electoral roll revision had “exposed” the BJP and the Election Commission, and people had started raising the “vote chor” slogan. Rahul urged the people to come forward to protect their rights.
He alleged that vote manipulation started in Gujarat and expanded nationally in 2014 and then spread to the states. Rahul claimed that the BJP has been winning elections at the Centre and in the states by “stealing votes”.
“Narendra Modi and Amit Shah said nothing about my media conference related to vote theft. This is because when a thief gets caught, he goes completely silent. He realises that he’s trapped, now he’s been caught,” Rahul told the rally.
He said vote manipulation had gone undetected for many years as it was being done on a small scale. According to Rahul, all limits were crossed in the Maharashtra Assembly elections last year.
“If someone steals ₹10 from your wallet, you wouldn’t suspect anything. But if someone steals ₹1,000, it will be noticed. This is what happened in Maharashtra,” Rahul said, iterating his allegation of large-scale addition of fake voters in Maharashtra.
Rahul also targeted the BJP’s ideological front, the RSS, on a day the Sangh chief spoke at a lecture in Delhi to mark 100 years of the outfit. “Remember — RSS people did not salute the Tricolour. Even now, those people stand for the Tricolour just for show, but their hearts hold something else while outwardly they display something different,” he said.
Rahul accused the RSS-BJP of planning to change the Constitution and take away reservations.
RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, in his speech, focused on the upcoming Assembly polls and accused Modi and Shah of running the Bihar government from Delhi. “Nitish Kumar is no longer capable of running the affairs. The government here is being run by Modiji and Amit Shah from Delhi. We have to oust this government,” he said.
