Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge questioned the Election Commission of India (ECI) over allegations of the poll body "shielding" certain people who are trying to delete votes of real voters, as he hailed party leader Rahul Gandhi for "thoroughly exposing mass vote deletion" in Karnataka's Aland constituency.
"CID probing the Aland AC voter deletion case, wrote 18 letters to ECI VEEP in 18 months, but ECI has stone-walled critical information necessary to track the culprits. Armed with concrete proof, Rahul Gandhi has thoroughly exposed the mass vote deletion in Aland Assembly in Karnataka," Kharge posted on X.
Raising three questions, Kharge asked who the poll body has been shielding to allow for alleged vote theft, asked if the Bharatiya Janata Party is "hollowing" out institutions meant to protect democracy and if the democracy itself could afford a system where a "Vote Chori Factory" is dismantling the electoral system.
"Who is the ECI shielding? Is BJP hollowing out the very Institutions meant to protect our Democracy? Can we afford a Democracy where the Electoral System is being dismantled by a Vote Chori Factory?" Kharge posted.
Senior party leader Ashok Gehlot also highlighted the example of a Godabai, who had her name deleted along with 12 others after a fake login was created.
"A woman whose name is Godabai. Someone created a fake login and deleted 12 voters, and there was an attempt to delete even more--but this attempt was stopped. Godabai, naturally, has no knowledge of this," Gehlot said.
"These are the mobile numbers that were used to delete people from the voter list. These numbers are not from Karnataka. These numbers are from different states," he added.
Earlier in a press conference at Congress headquarters, the party leader Rahul Gandhi alleged that he is "getting help" from people who are working for the Election Commission of India (ECI) in uncovering alleged vote fraud in the country.
"We have started getting help from inside the Election Commission. I am making it clear that we are now getting information from inside the Election Commission, this was not happening before, but now we are getting information from inside Election Commission, and this is not going to stop. India's people will not accept this. Once the youth comes to know that vote chori is happening then their power will come," Rahul Gandhi alleged.
He also alleged that the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar is "protecting vote chors" and is fully aware of how fraud is happening in deleting and adding fake voters in the voter list. -- ANI