NEW DELHI — The political spat between the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the Congress party got worse on Sunday when the Congress responded to the ECI’s news conference with a mix of sarcasm and direct challenges. The ECI had convened a briefing to deny the opposition’s claims of “vote theft” and other problems with the election, but the Congress swiftly shot back, continuing its campaign against the poll organization.
The official account of the Kerala Congress on X (formerly Twitter) made fun of the ECI’s defense by posting a silly, roundabout reason why cow’s milk is good for you. The piece, which was called a “coconut shell” account of the ECI’s press conference, finished with a barb that said the ECI’s answers were not rational or helpful.
At the same time, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera, who was in Sasaram, Bihar, for Rahul Gandhi’s “Voter Adhikaar Rally,” specifically questioned the ECI’s major point. The ECI said it couldn’t share CCTV footage from polling places or “machine-readable” voter records because it was worried about “voter privacy.” Khera replied, “Why do you even record it if you don’t plan to share it?” He pointed out that the ECI’s own rule says that the tape must be kept for 45 days before being destroyed, and he asked why privacy is not “hampered in those 45 days.”
Rahul Gandhi, who was speaking at a rally in Bihar at the same time as the ECI’s news conference in Delhi, repeated his claim that the poll body was “colluding” with the BJP. He said that the ECI’s actions were an attempt to steal the elections in Bihar and that the whole country now knew about it. Khera further said that the CEC, Gyanesh Kumar, didn’t respond properly to the claim that there were 1 lakh bogus voters in the Mahadevapura constituency, which Rahul Gandhi had portrayed as a major example of “vote theft.”
Kanhaiya Kumar, another Congress leader, joined in the criticism and said that the ECI should “stop conducting and start contesting elections themselves.” This suggested that the commission was operating like a partisan group instead of a neutral constitutional authority. The ECI’s news conference and the Congress’s response to it have made the issue a major topic of contention between the government and the opposition in the run-up to the Bihar elections.