NEW DELHI: Union home minister
Amit Shah on Wednesday offered a point-by-point rebuttal over the allegation of Congress leader
Rahul Gandhi over vote theft in the Lok Sabha.
During the ongoing debate on electoral reforms in the Parliament, Shah took a jibe at the Congress leader's "nuclear bomb" press conference said that his press conferences are not "Constitutional provisions."
"Opposition Leader Rahul Gandhi dropped a “nuclear bomb” in a press conference on 5 November 2025. In that ‘nuclear bomb’, he claimed that 501 votes had been cast from a single house in Haryana. The Election Commission has clarified that House Number 265 is no small dwelling, but rather a joint residence for multiple families built on a one-acre ancestral plot," the home minister said.
"However, separate house numbers have not been assigned to each family, so their house number is simply listed as 265. And in one of those families, three generations are living together. This numbering has been in place since the Congress government was elected in Haryana. It is neither a fake house nor fake votes," he added.
Shah also said that it is unfair to blame the people who appear twice in the voter list.
"Congress has claimed that some individuals are registered in two different locations on the electoral roll. It is unfair to blame the people who appear twice, as this is often a result of systemic issues. Since 2010, the Returning Officer's authority to remove duplicate entries has been revoked, which has led to such discrepancies. In fact, there are several leaders whose names are registered in more than one place. These are common mistakes caused by the updated rules," Shah said.
"The SIR is meant to prevent such occurrences, yet we are being accused of 'Vote Chori'," he added.
Amit Shah also replied to the three questions Rahul Gandhi had asked a day earlier.
"I want to ask three questions which will make it very clear that the BJP is directing and using the Election Commission to damage India's democracy," Rahul had said.
"Why the Chief Justice of India was removed from the selection panel for Election Commissioners?; Why, in December 2023, the government granted unprecedented immunity to Election Commissioners?; Why CCTV footage of polling stations is destroyed after 45 days?" he had asked.
Replying to Rahul Gandhi during his address, Amit Shah said, "For 73 years, there was no law governing the appointment of the Election Commission in this country; the process was overseen directly by the Prime Minister. From 1950 to 1989, the Election Commission operated as a single-member body. Throughout this period, the Prime Minister was responsible for all appointments to the Commission, and these appointments were never contested."
“From 1950-1989, the Election Commission was a one-person panel. The PM used to send a file to the President, and the latter would notify the same – it was fine then. From 1989-91, a multi-member panel was introduced to govern the poll panel," he said, adding, “In 2023, we made a law that there would be a Prime Minister, a minister chosen by him and the Leader of Opposition who will elect the Election Commissioner. We brought transparency," he added.
On CCTV footage being destroyed after 45 days, Shah said that keeping footage record of a polling booth is for internal management, not an admissible document. “This is just a simple thing…They don’t understand…Sense can’t be injected," said Shah, adding, “The CCTV footage of a polling station is deleted after 45 days as per law. Why do they question it? Why don’t they ask for it before 45 days of voting?"
“Discussion on EVMs was stopped in 2004 and 2009 because they (Congress) won. In 2014, when they lost, they started complaining again. Chunav main chori bandh hui hai isiliye pet mein dard ho raha hai," he said.
This comes days after Rahul Gandhi held two press conferences and claimed that Election Commission and Bharatiya Janata Party are hatching the conspiracy of stealing the mandate.
Rahul addressed said that his team has "100 per cent" proof that around 25 lakh voters in Haryana are either duplicate, non-existent or manipulated.
"We have the word 'H' Files and this is about how an entire state has been stolen. We suspected that this is not happening in individual constituencies, but at the state level and at the national level," Rahul said.
"We got a lot of complaints in Haryana, from our candidates, that something was wrong and not working. Their predictions all went upside down. We had experienced this in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra but we decided to zoom into Haryana and go into details about what had happened there," he added.
The Congress leader shared a breakup for the unaccounted votes and claimed that "vote chori" happened in Haryana assembly elections to the tune of 25 lakhs under 5 categories -- Duplicate voters, invalid addresses, bulk voters, and others.
He had further claimed that a lady, who turned out to be a Brazilian model, voted 22 times at 10 different booths with different names in the Haryana assembly elections.
Select The Times of India as your preferred source on Google Search