By Himanshi Dahiya

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Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, on Thursday, 18 September, addressed a press conference in Delhi to cite evidence of systematic and targeted addition and deletions of voters from electoral rolls in Karnataka and Maharashtra. The constituencies in question are Aland in Karnataka and Rajpura in Maharashtra.Rahul said that specific communities — including Dalits, Tribals, minorities, and OBCs — who largely vote for the opposition are being singled out in this exercise. This press conference came 40 days after the LoP raised questions on the electoral outcome of Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat, claiming that at least one lakh votes were ‘stolen’ in Mahadevapura Assembly segment during the 2024 polls.Fact Checking Election Commission’s Press Briefing on ‘Vote Chori’ and SIRThe first example presented by Rahul was from Karnataka’s Aland constituency, where he said 6,018 voter names were found to have been deleted, and the fraud was exposed only by chance when a booth-level officer discovered that even her own uncle’s vote had been removed from the rolls.”Aland is a constituency in Karnataka. Somebody tried to delete 6,018 votes. We don’t know the total number of votes that were deleted in Aland in the 2023 election. They are much higher than 6,018, but somebody got caught deleting those 6018 votes, and it was caught by coincidence. What happened was that the booth-level officer there noted that her uncle’s vote was deleted, so she checked who deleted her uncle’s vote, and she found that it was a neighbour who deleted the vote. She asked her neighbour, but they said I did not delete any vote. Neither the person deleting the vote nor the person whose vote was deleted knew. Some other force hijacked the process and deleted the vote.”Rahul GandhiRahul also mentioned that 6,850 ‘fake additions’ happened in Maharashtra’s Rajpura constituency. These new voters had dubious credentials on the rolls such as gibberish addresses and personal details. Rules Don’t Apply to ‘Vote Chori’ Claims: Experts on EC’s Oath Demand from RaGaIn the presentation, Rahul mentioned that voter deletions were being carried out in a centralised manner using software, not by individuals. He claimed that an automated program picked the first name from each booth to delete votes, with mobile numbers from outside the state used to file fake applications. Gandhi further asserted that this was not the work of local party workers but a large-scale, centrally coordinated operation.He cited the example of one ‘Suryakant’ whose ID was misused to file 12 fake vote deletion forms within 14 minutes.The LoP then said that the Karnataka CID has sent 18 letters in 18 months to the Election Commission of India (ECI) seeking destination IPs, device destination ports and OTP trails for allegedly fake applications — requests the EC has refused, he claimed, adding that the withheld data will reveal where the operation is being run.He then accused the ECI of shielding what he described as the “destroyer of democracy.”Bihar SIR: Deleted Voters Exceed 2024 Election Victory Margins in 24 SeatsHours after the press conference, the poll body said that Rahul Gandhi’s claims of voter theft in Aland and Rajpura are “incorrect and baseless”. It said that deletion of votes cannot be done online while admitting that several “unsuccessful” attempts were made for deletion of voters in Aland. It also added that the constituency was won by BJP in 2018 and Congress in 2023.