Congress leader Rahul Gandhi intensified his campaign against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, asserting that he is protecting actors responsible for mass deletion of voters from the electoral roll in several states, especially in Karnataka’s Aland constituency. Gandhi declared he had solid proof of systematic manipulation and software-based fraud, accusing the poll panel of undermining democracy.
Gandhi claimed that in Aland, which Congress won in 2023, 6,018 deletion applications were filed between February 2022 and February 2023. Of them, only 24 were genuine, he said, charging the remaining 5,994 were fraudulent. He alleged that fake logins, mobile numbers from outside Karnataka, and automated programmes were used to process deletion requests targeting Congress strongholds. Gandhi also cited similar irregularities in Rajura, in Maharashtra, where he said bogus names had been added. He demanded that the Election Commission release data—including destination IP addresses, device identifiers, OTP logs—within a week to aid Karnataka’s CID investigation. Congress, he said, has sent 18 letters over the past 18 months to the EC, but those requests remain unanswered.
The Election Commission rejected Gandhi’s allegations as “incorrect and baseless”, insisting no public deletion can be done online by an ordinary person. According to the Commission, deletion cannot be executed without giving affected individuals a chance to be heard. It said that in Aland, most suspect Form 7 applications were rejected; specifically, out of the 6,018 applications, only 24 were accepted. The EC said it had itself initiated an FIR in 2023 after detecting attempts to delete electors in Aland. The Karnataka electoral body provided details to law enforcement including applicant identifiers, mobile numbers, IP addresses, software used, and login data.
Gandhi’s presentation framed the alleged operation as centralised and automated rather than the work of individuals. He asserted that the top 10 polling booths with the most deletions in Aland were Congress bastions, arguing this pattern was too coincidental. He showed a video of an elderly woman, “Godabai”, who claimed she never filed any deletion request; also a man named “Suryakant”, said to have filed 12 deletion forms in 14 minutes, allegedly had no awareness of doing so. Gandhi accused the CEC of delaying or obstructing key digital leads needed to trace back the deletion operation.
Responses from other political figures and bodies have escalated the tensions. In Karnataka, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his ministers backed Gandhi’s claims, alleging voter deletion fraud and accusing the EC of non-cooperation with the state CID. EC officials, including the Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer, countered by saying the electoral roll verification process had protocols in place, and that irregular deletion applications had been largely detected and rejected.
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