Rahul Gandhi claims BJP wins since 2014 rigged, mum on Congress

Economic Times

a day ago

Rahul Gandhi claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party rigged elections since 2014. He alleged manipulation of up to 100 seats in the recent Lok Sabha polls. Gandhi stated that he has evidence of vote tampering. He recalled an alleged warning from Arun Jaitley. Mallikarjun Kharge raised concerns about voter list revisions in Bihar.
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New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday triggered a political storm by alleging that most elections won by the BJP since 2014 were fraudulent and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's third term was only possible due to large-scale rigging in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls . Addressing a legal conclave organised by the Congress's legal cell, Gandhi claimed the BJP manipulated up to 100 seats in the recent general election and said his party would soon present proof.Gandhi doubled down on his recent attack on the Election Commission, claiming he always had doubts about the fairness of BJP's sweeping victories since 2014. "I always had a suspicion that something was wrong, right from 2014... We don't get a single seat in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat. This was surprising to me," he said. Citing "atom bomb-level" evidence of vote tampering, Gandhi alleged that even a rigging of 10-15 seats would have changed the outcome. "Although our suspicion is closer to 70, 80, 100 seats," he added.He also said an upcoming Congress-led event in Karnataka would expose fake voters, claiming that in one seat alone, 1.5 lakh of 6.5 lakh voters were bogus.In a controversial aside, Gandhi recalled an alleged warning from late BJP leader Arun Jaitley over his support to the farm law protests. "When I was fighting the farm laws, Arun Jaitley ji was sent to me to threaten me," he said. "He told me, 'If you carry on opposing the govt, we will have to act against you.' I looked at him and said, 'I don't think you know who you're talking to'."The remark raised eyebrows as the farm law agitation began in 2020, more than a year after Jaitley's death in August 2019. However, Gandhi positioned the anecdote as part of his broader message of defiance, saying he had told his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra that he wasn't afraid of "playing with fire".Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge also targeted the government over the ongoing voter list revision in Bihar. "If 6.5 to 10 million voters are being excluded in a state of 70 million, it's not an error - it's a calculated move to remove the marginalised from the democratic process," he said.Party legal head Abhishek Manu Singhvi echoed the concern, warning that the Constitution was being twisted into a "tool of domination". He said it was the Congress that had built Indian democracy "not just in form but in spirit", and would now be called upon to defend it.However, Gandhi made no comments about the State elections that his party won in between.