INDIA Bloc’s ‘Vote Chori’ March to EC Today; Delhi Police Withhold Permission
In a major show of opposition unity, around 300 Members of Parliament from the INDIA bloc are set to march to the Election Commission’s headquarters in New Delhi on Monday to protest what they term as rampant “vote chori” (vote theft) and electoral malpractices. The demonstration, led by Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, aims to highlight allegations of collusion between the poll body and the BJP, but is proceeding without official permission from the Delhi Police.
The march, scheduled to begin from Parliament House at 11:30 am, marks one of the first significant joint protests by the opposition alliance outside of Parliament since the last Lok Sabha elections. At the heart of the protest are two key issues: the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar, which the opposition claims is an attempt to disenfranchise voters, and broader allegations of large-scale voter roll manipulation that they allege unfairly benefited the BJP in recent polls. The bloc has been disrupting parliamentary proceedings over these claims and is now taking its agitation to the streets.
Rahul Gandhi, who is spearheading the campaign, has demanded that the Election Commission release voter lists in a digital, machine-readable format to allow for public and political audits. “Vote Chori is an attack on the foundational idea of ‘one man, one vote’. A clean voter roll is imperative for free and fair elections,” Gandhi stated on social media, launching an online campaign to rally support for the cause.
His campaign is fueled by specific allegations of fraud in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura constituency, where he claimed a Congress analysis found over 100,000 fraudulent votes, including thousands of duplicate voters, names with fake addresses, and invalid photos.
The Election Commission has pushed back strongly against the allegations. The Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer has issued a formal notice to Rahul Gandhi, demanding he submit documentary evidence for his specific claim that a voter named Shakun Rani had cast her ballot twice.
A preliminary probe by the poll body found the woman had voted only once and that the document Gandhi presented was not issued by a polling officer. More broadly, the EC has dismissed the Congress leader’s accusations as a “tired script” and challenged him to either submit his evidence under a signed oath or apologize to the nation.
