At a press conference on Thursday, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, escalated his criticism of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, accusing him of shielding those responsible for what he described as the “murder of Indian democracy.” Gandhi alleged that the Election Commission is deliberately withholding crucial information about large-scale voter deletions in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. He urged the poll body chief to stop defending those behind this alleged operation and issued a direct challenge, demanding that details of the “vote deletions” be made public within a week.
Gandhi opened his address by highlighting the case of Karnataka’s Aland constituency, where, according to him, an attempt was made to delete 6,018 votes using software tools and mobile phone numbers sourced from outside the state. To substantiate his claim, he displayed phone numbers that were allegedly used to carry out the deletions.
He further alleged that despite repeated requests from investigating agencies, the Election Commission had failed to cooperate. According to Gandhi, the state’s CID had written 18 separate letters over the past 18 months, asking for IP addresses and OTP-related details to trace the source of the voter deletions. However, he claimed that the Election Commission had not responded to these letters.
“The ECI is refusing to provide this information because it will lead us directly to the centralised operation behind this fraud,” Gandhi said, arguing that the lack of transparency reveals a deliberate effort to protect those manipulating the electoral process. He maintained that the issue strikes at the very core of Indian democracy and demanded immediate accountability from the poll body.
