Rahul Gandhi accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of working in collusion to perpetuate a large-scale fraud in the voter rolls of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. He claimed that over 100,000 votes were “stolen” in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura assembly constituency which led the saffron party to win the Bengaluru Central seat. 

Groundxero | Aug 7, 2025

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday (August 7) accused the Election Commission of Inida (ECI) in collusion with the BJP of perpetrating “a huge criminal fraud” in the voter rolls of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.  To validate his allegations, Rahul Gandhi released data from an investigation carried out by a Congress appointed team in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency that is part of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency in Karnataka.

The Congress won all the Assembly segments in Bangalore Central except Mahadevpura and lost the election by 1,14,046 votes. The Congress party initiated its own investigation into alleged voter fraud, after internal polls indicated 16 wins in Karnataka Lok Sabha, but victories in only nine seats were achieved. BJP’s victory margins in many cases were unexpectedly large, raising suspicions of vote manipulation. Opinion and exit polls did not align at all with the election results. 

The Congress party had raised concerns about mass-scale vote fraud, particularly in the last Maharashtra assembly elections, alleging that one crore voters were added in Maharashtra and the election stolen.

The party decided to launch its own investigation into what it was convinced was a huge fraud being perpetuated in elections by the BJP-EC nexus. During the protest against SIR in Bihar, Rahul Gandhi had told reporters that elections are being “stolen” and that he was going to show it in “black and white” with an example of a Lok Sabha constituency in Karnataka, which he claimed the Congress party has intensively studied. He added the revelation of “vote chori” (vote theft) which will explode like an “atom bomb”. 

A focused investigation of the voter’s roll of the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency in Bangalore Central was done, and today, before the media, Rahul Gandhi revealed 100,250 instances of vote fraud with various types of manipulation, including duplicate voters and fake addresses in a single assembly constituency. 

Addressing a press conference at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters, Rahul Gandhi demonstrated before the media, ways in which the election to the Bangalore Central seat was stolen. He alleged that out of 6.5 lakh total votes in the Mahadevapura Assembly, 1,00,250 votes were stolen in five different ways: duplicate voters, fake and invalid addresses, bulk voters in a single address, invalid photos, and misuse of Form 6 given to first-time voters for enrolment.” This manipulation of the electoral rolls, he alleged, led the saffron party to win the Bengaluru Central seat.

The investigation identified multiple categories of vote fraud, indicating systemic manipulation in the electoral process:

• Duplicate voters accounted for 11,965 instances, with the same voter appearing multiple times in voter rolls. ​
• 40,009 voters were registered with fake addresses that either do not exist or are unverifiable. ​
• 10,452 voters were registered at a single address, raising questions about legitimacy.
• 4,132 voters had invalid or indistinguishable photos, complicating verification. ​
• Misuse of Form 6 led to 33,692 voters being registered improperly.

Rahul Gandhi cited the example of a person whom he identified as Gurkirat Singh Dang, whose name figured in voter lists in four different polling booths in Mahadevpura. “There are thousands of such voters who have voted multiple times in different states. A total of 11,965 votes have been stolen like this,” he said.

He showed the photograph of another person whom he identified as Adtiya Srivastava, and claimed the person was enrolled as a voter in two polling booths in Karnataka and one each in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.

He alleged fake details like in the father’s name column, and showed how in one case, the father’s name is written as ‘ilsdfhug’, in another ‘dfoigoidf’.”

He highlighted the existence of “bulk voters” with the same address. He showed a photograph of a brewery whose address was cited by 68 voters. Showing the photograph of a house no 35, he alleged that it is a single-room house where 80 voters are shown living with different names, different families. In another house, 46 voters all from different families were found living in a single bedroom house, he said.

Regarding the alleged misuse of Form 6, given to first-time voters for enrolment, Rahul Gandhi cited the example of a 70-year-old  lady called Shakun Rani, who got registered as a new voter twice in two months, and she cast her votes twice in two different booths. Rahul alleged that they found 33,692 such enrollment of new voters but they are all old.

Rahul said that this manipulation did not happen in just one Assembly segment. He alleged that widespread electoral fraud and manipulation of election is being done at a huge scale across the country in state after state after state, and holds the Election Commission responsible for lack of transparency and accountability. He accused the EC of evading transparency and destroying evidence related to voter rolls. He said that the Congress party Congress wrote four letters to the EC demanding access to voter rolls. The EC has refused to share digital voter rolls and changed rules to limit access to CCTV footage. ​He said that there are questions about what the EC is hiding from the public.

The investigation emphasizes how a small number of fraudulent votes can significantly impact election results, particularly in close races.

• Congress lost Haryana by 8 seats, with a total vote gap of just 22,779 votes.
• BJP won 25 Lok Sabha seats with margins less than 33,000 votes, indicating potential manipulation. ​
• The need for only 25 seats to maintain power highlights the critical nature of vote integrity.

Responding to his allegations, Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer V Anbukumar wrote a letter to Rahul Gandhi asking him to share names of electors that he had alleged in a press conference were included or excluded wrongfully from the voters’ list of the state. He was asked to sign a declaration and oath, under Rule 20(3)(b) of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, which includes an undertaking that he would be punished under law if his “vote theft” claim is found to be false. 

The Election Commission of India (ECI) said in a post on X. “If Shri Rahul Gandhi believes what he is saying is true, he should sign the Declaration/Oath as per Rule 20(3)(b) of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 and submit the same to CEO of Karnataka by today evening itself so that necessary proceedings can be initiated.”

Rahul Gandhi responded to the ECI’s statement saying, “I’m a politician. What I say to the people is my word. I’m saying it publicly to everybody. Take it as an oath. This is their data, and we are displaying their data.”

“This is not our data. This is Election Commission data. Interestingly, they haven’t denied the information. They haven’t told the voter list that Rahul Gandhi is talking about are wrong. Why don’t you say they wrong? Because you know the truth. You know that we know that you have done this across the country…,” he said.

The Congress party emphasized the importance of defending democracy against manipulation and the need to uphold the Constitution in light of the alleged electoral fraud. It called for complete transparency in the electoral process to restore public trust in elections.