New Delhi: Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi said Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar “will go to jail” as INDIA bloc leaders demanded his removal at the ‘Vote Bachao-Desh Bachao’ rally at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan on Sunday, November 1, according to a Congress statement.
The Congress said lakhs of people attended the rally, which Gandhi had called last month. The leaders’ allegations of vote theft are their own claims and have not been established; the Congress statement carried no response from the Election Commission or the BJP.
Who attended
The statement listed Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav, Farooq Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, M A Baby, Sanjay Raut and Supriya Sule among those present.
Rahul Gandhi’s allegations
Gandhi alleged that vote theft had been taking place for a long time and claimed elections were stolen in West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Haryana, as well as in the 2024 general election.
He claimed about 13.3 crore voters, or 15 per cent, were removed from the rolls after the 2024 election, while the vote-share gap between the NDA and INDIA was three per cent. “If the deleted voters were not legitimate, that means the 2024 election was illegal,” he said.
“Note it down, Gyanesh Kumar will go to jail,” Gandhi said, calling the alleged theft a “rarest of the rare” case and “treason”. He told Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, “There will be legal action taken against all of you.”
He also said, “We don’t hate Narendra Modi, Amit Shah or Gyanesh Kumar,” and added, “We are not people of violence.”
What Kharge said
Kharge alleged that the government was adding and deleting votes in collusion with the Chief Election Commissioner. “It is not the voters who choose Modi, it is Modi who chooses the voters,” he said.
He said Gyanesh Kumar would have to leave however much Modi and Shah tried to protect him.
Claims about institutions and jobs
Gandhi also alleged that the RSS had captured institutions including the CBI, the ED, the judiciary, the bureaucracy and the police. He said farmers were not getting their rights and young people were not getting jobs, while loans of favoured billionaires were waived.
