‘Desh se maafi maangni hogi…' CEC Gyanesh Kumar BIG challenge to Rahul Gandhi on ‘vote chori' claims

Mint

17 hours ago

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar said on Sunday that he rebuked Rahul Gandhi over his 'vote chori' allegation and asked him to either sign an affidavit or apologise to the nation for his remarks, which he described as an 'insult' to the Constitution of India.
The Election Commission's remarks came on a day when Congress Member of Parliament (MP) Rahul Gandhi launched his 1,300 km-long 'Voter Adhikar Yatra' from poll-bound Bihar's Sasaram to step up the Opposition INDIA bloc's campaign against its "vote chori" (vote theft) claims.
On 7 August, Rahul Gandhi had alleged 'vote chori (theft)' of 1,00,250 votes in an assembly of a Karnataka Lok Sabha constituency, with 11,965 duplicate voters in the segment, 40,009 voters with fake and invalid addresses, 10,452 bulk voters or single-address voters, 4,132 voters with invalid photos,
Here are the top 10 remarks from Gynesh Kumar during the press conference on Sunday:
Gynesh Kumar said India is the world's biggest democracy, we have the largest electoral roll, about 90 crore, the biggest team of election officials and the highest number of voters.
'And amid all this in the presence of the media, if you say that there are duplicate voters and some people have voted twice and call my voters criminals, it is not possible that the Election Commission will not react. You will have to sign an affidavit or apologise to the nation (desh se maafi maangni padegi.) There is no third option. I want to say if there is no affidavit it seven days, it means the allegations are baseless,' he said.
When more than 7 crore votes of Bihar are standing with the Election Commission of India,then neither can any question mark be raised on the credibility of the Election Commission nor on the credibility of the voters, Gyanesh Kumar said. "When the voter doesn't challenge his candidate selection in the courts and then wrong words like 'vote chori' are used to mislead the people, isn't it ani nsult to the Constitution of India,"
Gyanesh Kumar also explained how duplicate voter ID cards can be possible.
"Duplicate EPICs can happen in two ways. One, that a person who is in West Bengal, who is a different person, has one EPIC number and another person who is in Haryana has the same EPIC number. When this question came up around March 2025, we discussed it and we solved it across the country. About three lakh such people were found, whose EPIC number were the same, so their EPIC numbers were changed. The second type of duplication comes when the name of the same person is in the voter list at more than one place and his EPIC number is different. That is, one person, many EPICs,' he said.
Gyanesh Kumar also responded to theCCTV footage demand.
"We saw a few days ago that photos of many voters were presented to the media without their permission. Allegations were made against them, they were used. Should the Election Commission share the CCTV videos of any voter including their mothers, daughters-in-law, daughters? Only those whose names are in the voter list cast their votes to elect their candidate," he said.
The truth is that step by step all the stakeholders are committed, trying and working hard to make the SIR of Bihar a complete success, Gyanesh Kumar said. When more than seven crore voters of Bihar are standing with the Election Commission, then neither can any question mark be raised on the credibility of the Election Commission nor on the credibility of the voters, he said.
'...The SIR exercise has not been done in the last 20 years... The SIR exercise has been carried out more than 10 times in the country. The main purpose of SIR is to purify the voter list... The SIR exercise is being carried out after receiving many complaints from political parties,' the CEC said.
Kumar said about 1.6 lakh Booth Level Agents(BLA) have prepared a draft SIR list in poll-bound Bihar. "As this draft list was being prepared in every booth, the Booth Level Agents of all political parties verified it with their signatures...Voters have submitted a total of 28,370 claims and objections," he said.
The three Election Commissioners will decide when the exercise of SIR will be carried out in West Bengal or other states"
"Some voters alleged double voting. When asked for proof, no answer was given. Neither the Election Commission nor any voter is afraid of such false allegations. When politics is being done by targeting the voters of India by keeping a gun on the shoulder of the Election Commission, today the Election Commission wants to make it clear to everyone that the Election Commission fearlessly stood like a rock with all the voters of all sections and all religions including the poor, rich, elderly, women, youth without any discrimination, is standing and will continue to stand."
The machine-readable voter list is prohibited, Gyanesh Kumar said citing a decision of the Election Commission after the judgment of the Supreme Court and is from 2019.
'We have to understand the difference between a machine-readable voter list and a searchable voter list. You can search the voter list available on the Election Commission website by entering the EPIC number. You can also download it,' Gyanesh Kumar said.
This, he said, is not called machine-readable. Regarding machine-readable, in 2019, the Supreme Court also studied this subject in depth and found that giving a machine-readable electoral roll can violate the privacy of the voter...
"The machine-readable voter list is prohibited. This decision of the Election Commission is after the judgment of the Supreme Court and is from 2019..." the CEC said.
Kumar said that according to the Constitution of India, only Indian citizens can vote for the election of MP and MLA. "People from other countries do not have the right. If such people have filled out the enumeration form, then during the SIR process, they will have to prove their nationality by submitting some documents. Their names will be removed after the investigation," he said.
In Lok Sabha elections 2024, Kumar said, more than one crore employees, more than 10 lakh booth level agents, more than 20 lakh polling agents of candidates work for the elections.
"In such a transparent process in front of so many people, can any voter steal votes?..." he asked.
As per the Constitution of India, every citizen of India who has attained the age of 18 years must become a voter and must also vote, the CEC said.
'You all know that, as per the law, every political party is born through registration with the Election Commission. Then how can the Election Commission discriminate among the same political parties? For the Election Commission, all are equal. No matter who belongs to any political party, the Election Commission will not step back from its constitutional duty,' Gyanesh Kumar said.