Bihar: Congress MP Rahul Gandhi Claims BJP Engaged In Widespread Vote Theft Since Gujarat, Targets National Elections Too

Patna: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday triggered a political firestorm by alleging that BJP started stealing votes for the first time in Gujarat before doing the same thing at the national level in the 2014 Lok Sabha election.

Addressing “Samajik Adhikar Samvad” at Phulparas in Madhubani district, Gandhi claimed that BJP had been indulging in vote theft for years as it started indulging in it from Gujarat before doing it at the national level in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Later, BJP did vote theft in every state, he alleged, and asserted that the party`s vote theft remained unnoticed all these years but was caught when they did it at a massive scale in Maharashtra and Haryana.

“When a person steals Rs 10 from somebody`s pocket, he does not get alarmed but when Rs 1000 is stolen from his pocket, he gets alerted,” Gandhi remarked.

He claimed that after he held a press conference after collecting evidence to disclose how the vote theft was committed in one of the assembly constituencies of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency but no BJP leader including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, union home minister responded to his allegations.

“It is like a thief remaining fully silent when his theft is caught,” he remarked. “When union home minister Shah claimed a few years ago that the BJP will be in government for 40-50 years, I found his statement surprising. But he can say so as his party is stealing votes,” he contended. “I do not say anything until I have evidence (to prove it),” he added. He said that the BJP-led NDA government enacted a new law in 2023, stipulating that no case (judicial action) could be taken against the Election Commission, alleging that it was done to ensure that BJP could steal votes with impunity.

“In Bihar, names of 65 lakh voters have been deleted from the electoral rolls, but they (BJP) would add 65 lakh new voters to the list,” he alleged.

Telangana chief minister Revanth Reddy was also present in the event.

On the other hand, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav alleged that BJP was not only ‘vote chor’ but also ‘reservation chor’ as it refused to put Bihar`s enhanced reservation quota in the 9th schedule of the constitution to insulate it from the legal scrutiny. He said that all recommendations of the Mandal commission would be implemented if the INDIA bloc formed a government in Bihar, adding that only 4-5 percent of the recommendations had been enforced so far.