Rahul alleges over 1 lakh fake voters helped BJP win Bangalore Central
At a press conference held in New Delhi on Thursday, August 7, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi launched a scathing attack on the Election Commission of India (ECI), accusing it of facilitating widespread electoral malpractice. And to make his point, the Congress leader chose the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat as a case study.He alleged that the constituency was “stolen” from the Congress through fraudulent voter entries.In the 2024 election, Congress candidate Mansoor Ali Khan lost to BJP’s PC Mohan by a margin of 32,707 votes. Rahul Gandhi said that they found that most of the BJP's lead came from just one area: the Mahadevapura assembly segment, where the BJP had a margin of over 1.14 lakh votes. Bangalore Central consists of 8 assembly segments. The Congress party claims to have physically verified lakhs of voter entries in Mahadevapura, sifting through printed rolls that, when stacked, reached over seven feet in height. Their investigation reportedly revealed over 1,00,250 suspicious or fraudulent entries. According to the party, these entries fell into five categories: duplicate voters (11,965), fake or invalid addresses (40,009), bulk voter registrations at a single address (10,452), invalid or indistinguishable photos (4,132), and misuse of Form 6, which is meant for first-time voters (33,692).During the press conference, Rahul Gandhi shared examples to support each category of alleged fraud. In one case, a voter named Gurkirat Singh Dang was found registered in multiple polling booths across different states, including Mumbai and Lucknow, using the same EPIC ID. In another instance, thousands of voters were registered at addresses that either didn’t exist or had placeholder entries like “0” or “—”. Gandhi highlighted commercial establishments listed as residential addresses—most notably, a Bengaluru brewery named Biere Club was shown to have 68 voters registered to it. In other cases, multiple voters were shown living in small, single-room homes.The Congress also pointed to instances of duplicate voter registration with slight variations in name or photo. Gandhi presented the case of a 70-year-old woman named Shakun Rani who was registered twice within two months and had voted in both instances. “Both Shakun Ranis voted. This is proof of double voting, and this is why the EC destroyed CCTV footage,” he alleged.Rahul asserted that of 30,000 new voters registered, no one was between 18 to 25 years of age. Rahul Gandhi said that if votes from Mahadevapura were not counted, Congress would have won the seat by more than 82,000 votes.Rahul Gandhi accused the Election Commission of actively obstructing scrutiny into such anomalies. He said the EC refused to share digital copies of the voter rolls, changed the rules to restrict access to CCTV footage from polling booths, and provided scanned documents in non-machine-readable formats, making it impossible to digitally verify or analyse the voter lists. “These are not the actions of a neutral authority,” Gandhi said. “This is the behaviour of an institution that has something to hide.”While Bangalore Central was the focus of the presentation, Gandhi argued that similar manipulations were possible in other parts of the country. In Haryana, he said, the Congress lost eight Assembly seats by a combined margin of just 22,779 votes out of over 2 crore cast. He also pointed out that the BJP won 25 Lok Sabha seats with a margin of less than 33,000 votes each. “If the BJP needed only 25 seats to form the government, what does that tell us? This is how democracy is being destroyed,” he said.Gandhi also criticised the Election Commission for failing to respond to the Congress’s repeated demands for transparency. “The public has a right to complete transparency. No election record should be destroyed,” he said.
AT a press conference held in New Delhi on Thursday, August 7, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi launched a scathing attack on the Election Commission of India (ECI), accusing it of facilitating widespread electoral malpractice. And to make his point, the Congress leader chose the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat as a case study.
He alleged that the constituency was “stolen” from Congress through fraudulent voter entries.
In the 2024 election, Congress candidate Mansoor Ali Khan lost to BJP’s PC Mohan by a margin of 32,707 votes. Rahul Gandhi said that they found that most of the BJP's lead came from just one area: the Mahadevapura assembly segment, where the BJP had a margin of over 1.14 lakh votes. Bangalore Central consists of 8 assembly segments.
The Congress party claims to have physically verified lakhs of voter entries in Mahadevapura, sifting through printed rolls that, when stacked, reached over seven feet in height.
Their investigation reportedly revealed over 1,00,250 suspicious or fraudulent entries. According to the party, these entries fell into five categories: duplicate voters (11,965), fake or invalid addresses (40,009), bulk voter registrations at a single address (10,452), invalid or indistinguishable photos (4,132), and misuse of Form 6, which is meant for first-time voters (33,692).
During the press conference, Rahul Gandhi shared examples to support each category of alleged fraud.
In one case, a voter named Gurkirat Singh Dang was found registered in multiple polling booths across different states, including Mumbai and Lucknow, using the same EPIC ID.
In another instance, thousands of voters were registered at addresses that either didn’t exist or had placeholder entries like “0” or “—”.
Gandhi highlighted commercial establishments listed as residential addresses—most notably, a Bengaluru brewery named Biere Club was shown to have 68 voters registered to it. In other cases, multiple voters were shown living in small, single-room homes.
The Congress also pointed to instances of duplicate voter registration with slight variations in name or photo. Gandhi presented the case of a 70-year-old woman named Shakun Rani who was registered twice within two months and had voted in both instances. “Both Shakun Ranis voted. This is proof of double voting, and this is why the EC destroyed CCTV footage,” he alleged.
Rahul asserted that of 30,000 new voters registered, no one was between 18 to 25 years of age.
Rahul Gandhi said that if votes from Mahadevapura were not counted, Congress would have won the seat by more than 82,000 votes.
Rahul Gandhi accused the Election Commission of actively obstructing scrutiny into such anomalies. He said the EC refused to share digital copies of the voter rolls, changed the rules to restrict access to CCTV footage from polling booths, and provided scanned documents in non-machine-readable formats, making it impossible to digitally verify or analyse the voter lists. “These are not the actions of a neutral authority,” Gandhi said. “This is the behaviour of an institution that has something to hide.”
While Bangalore Central was the focus of the presentation, Gandhi argued that similar manipulations were possible in other parts of the country.
In Haryana, he said, the Congress lost eight Assembly seats by a combined margin of just 22,779 votes out of over 2 crore cast. He also pointed out that the BJP won 25 Lok Sabha seats with a margin of less than 33,000 votes each. “If the BJP needed only 25 seats to form the government, what does that tell us? This is how democracy is being destroyed,” he said.
Gandhi also criticised the Election Commission for failing to respond to the Congress’s repeated demands for transparency. “The public has a right to complete transparency. No election record should be destroyed,” he said.
