NEW DELHI:
Congress leader
Rahul Gandhi on Friday repeated his "vote chori" charge and criticised the Election Commission, terming it an "
Chunaav ka chaukidar" (election watchman) who "stayed awake, watched the theft, and protected the thieves".
His remarks came a day after he accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of shielding those who "destroyed democracy".
To support his allegation, Gandhi cited data from a Karnataka assembly constituency and said votes of Congress supporters were being deliberately deleted.
The Election Commission rejected the claims, calling them "incorrect and baseless". It said, "No deletion of any vote can be done online by any member of the public, as misconceived by Gandhi."
Meanwhile, in a post in Hindi on X on Friday, Gandhi, while sharing a 36-second video from his Thursday's press conference, wrote, "Wake up at 4am Eliminate two voters in 36 seconds, Then go back to sleep - this is how vote theft happens!" He added, "Chunaav ka chaukidar jaagta raha, chori dekhta raha, choron ko bachata raha (The election watchman stayed awake, watched the theft, and protected the thieves)."
BJP's response
The Bharatiya Janata Party hit back at Gandhi’s remarks. Parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju said Gandhi had to accept that his leadership of the Congress had "failed", leading to repeated election losses, while the youth were supporting Prime Minister
Narendra Modi.
Rijiju said Gandhi had "abused" India’s democratic system and added, "The nation won't believe Rahul Gandhi..."
He further said, "The poor, the farmers, and the common people consider PM Modi their leader. After losing elections, if Rahul Gandhi keeps blaming the system to hide his weaknesses, no one can accept it. The country has changed and, under PM Modi's leadership, India has progressed."
"People like Rahul Gandhi want to stop the engine that is driving India forward..." Rijiju added.
BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad also attacked Rahul Gandhi’s statements and said he does not prepare before making public remarks.
Prasad told reporters, "What has happened to Rahul Gandhi? How much will he lie? You are deceiving the democracy. I have previously said that Rahul Gandhi never does his homework."
He also said, "Yesterday, he addressed a press conference where he showed the picture of the Chief Election Commissioner. Election Commission will defend itself, but you are showing the picture of Gyanesh Kumar, who recently became the Election Commissioner, and you are blaming him for the 2023 polls."
On Gandhi’s remarks about Aland, Prasad said the Congress candidate had won there and that Gandhi’s statements put his party’s leader at risk.
"He talked about the Aland constituency, where the BJP won (elections) till 2018 but lost in 2023, while Congress won by 248 votes. Rahul Gandhi, you are bringing trouble for your own candidate. Have you lost all sense of purpose and propriety?" Prasad said.
In his fresh offensive against the Election Commission, Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, had said Thursday that the poll panel must stop protecting "vote chors" and provide within a week information sought by the Karnataka CID in an investigation into voter deletions.
If not, it will be known for sure that the poll body is complicit in the "murder of the Constitution", Gandhi alleged at his press conference at the Congress' Indira Bhawan headquarters here.
And this, he said at the outset, was not the "hydrogen bomb" revelations that he had promised. That will happen soon.
Gandhi cited details of alleged attempts to delete 6,018 votes in Karnataka's Aland constituency in the run up to 2023 assembly polls. He also gave the example of Maharashtra's Rajura constituency where he claimed 6,850 voters were added in a "fraudulent" manner using automated software.
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