Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, stepped up his attack on the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday. He said that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar was actively stopping an investigation into claims that voters had been deleted in Karnataka’s Aland constituency.
The Congress politician said on X (previously Twitter) that when their candidate in Aland exposed a fraud, a local EC official filed a FIR. However, the CID probe has been “BLOCKED by CEC” ever since.
“The Karnataka CID has sent 18 letters in 18 months asking for all the evidence that could be used against them, but the CEC has blocked them.” Gandhi added, “The Karnataka EC has sent ECI several requests to cooperate with the investigation, but CEC has blocked them.”
He said that if the “vote theft” hadn’t been uncovered and the 6,018 votes had been removed, their candidate might have lost the race. Gandhi told CEC Gyanesh Kumar to “stop making excuses” and “release the evidence to the Karnataka CID right now.”
The ECI and the Karnataka CEO’s Office deny the claims.
The ECI quickly and directly responded by posting a fact-check on X, calling Gandhi’s accusations “wrong and baseless.” The ECI said that no one can remove a vote online and that an ECI official filed a FIR to look into the situation in the first place.
Earlier in the day, Gandhi had also accused the Chief Election Commissioner at a press conference in New Delhi of supporting “vote chors” (vote thieves) and people who have “destroyed democracy.” He used the Aland constituency as an example of a planned endeavor to get rid of the names of people who support Congress.
Later on Thursday, the Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO) office put out a statement to clear things up. It verified that the Superintendent of Police, Kalaburagi, had already been given all the evidence about the suspected attempts to remove 6,018 votes before the 2023 Assembly elections. The CEO’s office said that the FIR was filed by Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), who work for the ECI, and that the CEO’s office has been giving the investigation all the help and documents it needs.
The CEO’s office said, “Following ECI’s orders, the CEO of Karnataka gave the Superintendent of Police in Kalaburagi district all the information ECI had on 06.09.2023 to finish the investigation.” This goes against Gandhi’s claim that the ECI was keeping information from him.