Ahead of the Bihar assembly elections, senior Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, initiated a ‘voter rights journey’ from Sasaram on Sunday, accusing the Election Commission (EC) of ‘SIR’ (a reference to vote manipulation). This 16-day journey will cover 1300 kilometers across 20 districts of Bihar. The journey’s commencement was attended by Lalu Prasad Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav, with other leaders from the India alliance expected to join in the coming days. They plan to raise awareness against electoral fraud in Bihar. However, on the same day, the EC’s full bench dismissed Gandhi’s allegations of vote theft and manipulation, giving him a seven-day ultimatum to either submit an affidavit or issue an apology.
Gandhi has previously accused the EC and the BJP of match-fixing during the Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, and Maharashtra assembly elections. With the recent announcement of ‘SIR’ in Bihar, the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi intensified their attacks on the EC. Opposition parties, including 300 MPs, marched from the streets to the Parliament against SIR. Gandhi specifically highlighted alleged irregularities in the Mahadevpura Lok Sabha constituency in Karnataka, where he claimed nearly one lakh votes were stolen.
Gandhi alleged that there were over one lakh suspicious entries in Bengaluru Central’s Mahadevpura, including duplicate voters, invalid addresses, and multiple registrations at the same location. He cited instances where voters allegedly cast their votes twice, claims the EC has dismissed. He also claimed that CCTV footage from polling stations had been deleted and pointed to cases where dozens of voters were registered at the same address.