The Congress leader and the member of Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, alleged a large-scale voter scam in Karnataka and Maharashtra’s assembly elections, accusing the Election Commission of India of vote manipulation along with BJP. Chief Electoral Officers of Karnataka and Maharashtra responded immediately to the allegations made by Rahul Gandhi. He accused 100,250 votes of being stolen in the Karnataka seat.
Attacking the election commission of India, Congress leader and member of Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi had taken a press conference in New Delhi on August 07, 2025. He claimed that the 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections were stolen, criticizing the Election Commission of India (ECI) for colluding with the ruling party, BJP. He also alleged large-scale vote fraud in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura constituency.
Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters, Rahul Gandhi said that the Congress had put together an investigation team and collected evidence of “vote chori” in six months. He added that his party had suspected irregularities over the Maharashtra elections for a long time. The Maharashtra election results confirmed our suspicion that the assembly elections were stolen, he said. When the election commission of India refused to provide a machine-readable voter list, it confirmed its collusion with the BJP.
If the election commission doesn’t provide us the machine-readable data for the past 10-15 years along with CCTV footage, they are participating in the crime, Gandhi added.
In Karnataka, Gandhi alleged that over one lakh votes fraudulently occurred in the Mahadevapura assembly constituency, out of a total of 6.5 lakh votes. The Congress research team had found large numbers of duplicate voters, bulk entries, and invalid addresses. He called the voter list fraud “vote chori.”
He said that they analyzed the data of the Lok Sabha constituency of Bangalore Central and the Mahadevapura assembly segment in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The Congress got 626,208 votes, while the BJP got 658,915 votes, leading by 32,707 votes. The Congress won six out of seven segments. He lost in the Mahadevapura assembly segment, in which he was defeated by 114,000 votes.
Rahul Gandhi claimed there was a ‘vote chori’ in elections over 100,250 votes in the constituency, with 11,965 duplicate votes in one assembly segment, 10,452 bulk votes on a single address, 40,009 votes with fake addresses, 4,132 votes with invalid photos, and 33,692 votes misusing form no. 6. Rahul Gandhi stated that the alleged actions of the election commission constitute a crime against the Indian constitution and the national flag.
EC’s functionaries said the CEO of Karnataka is expecting a signed declaration form by Rahul Gandhi over his allegation. But Gandhi rejected the EC’s demand by saying, “I said it publicly and take it as an oath.” He added that the election commission had not disputed the authenticity of the lists he presented but merely requested formal confirmation. “They knew the truth,” he asserted.
