Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini on Wednesday dismissed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s explosive claims of large-scale voter fraud in the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections, calling them “baseless lies” meant to mislead the public.
“Rahul Gandhi is lying. Four generations of his family have ruled this country, and yet he has to resort to falsehoods,” Saini said, addressing reporters in Chandigarh. Accusing the Congress of lacking both credibility and issues, the chief minister added, “The Congress has become irrelevant and desperate. This is nothing but an attempt to create confusion and undermine the integrity of the election process.”
Earlier in the day, Rahul Gandhi had levelled serious allegations against the BJP and the Election Commission of India, claiming that over 25 lakh fake voter entries — roughly 12 per cent of Haryana’s total electorate — were inserted into the rolls to turn a Congress victory into defeat. “Haryana has two crore voters, and 25 lakh of them are fake,” Gandhi said at a press conference in Delhi. “This is 100 per cent proof of vote chori (vote theft).”
He claimed his team had verified 5.21 lakh duplicate entries, alleging that the same names, photographs, and voter IDs appeared multiple times across constituencies. As evidence, he cited a viral case where a Brazilian model’s photograph appeared under different names — Seema, Sweety, and Saraswati — across ten booths in Rai constituency, allegedly to cast votes 22 times.
Calling it a “systematic and planned operation,” Gandhi said the manipulation had been orchestrated by the BJP with the Election Commission’s complicity. “All exit polls predicted a Congress sweep in Haryana. But for the first time in the state’s history, postal ballots didn’t match the actual votes,” he claimed. “A plan was executed to convert our clear victory into a loss.”
The Congress leader also alleged that thousands of BJP functionaries were registered to vote in both Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, naming several individuals to back his charge. “A BJP leader in Palwal has 66 voters registered at his home. Another man has 500 voters at a single address. This is a joke on democracy,” he said.
Rahul Gandhi further accused the BJP of exploiting “House No. Zero” — a designation meant for homeless voters — to create fake entries. “We verified them on the ground. Those voters have real homes. This is not a clerical error; this is deliberate manipulation,” he asserted, adding that the Election Commission “no longer functions independently.”
In response, Saini rejected the allegations outright, saying that the Congress was “fabricating stories to cover up its defeat.” “The elections were free, fair, and transparent,” he said. “The Election Commission is an autonomous body, and no one can influence its process. Rahul Gandhi should stop insulting institutions just because he cannot handle losing.”
Saini also accused the Congress of attempting to provoke unrest ahead of the Bihar Assembly elections, which are scheduled to begin this week. “The Congress is now trying to preemptively discredit democratic institutions before the Bihar polls. This is part of their national strategy of misinformation,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission has not issued a formal statement responding to Gandhi’s allegations, but sources within the poll body maintained that routine verification and corrections of electoral rolls were ongoing. Officials said that while isolated photo mismatches and clerical errors occur during data digitisation, claims of “massive organised fraud” are unfounded.
As the political slugfest continues, Haryana’s ruling BJP has accused the Congress of trying to “delegitimise the electoral process” to explain its poor performance, while Congress leaders insist that the revelations point to “a larger national pattern of manipulated democracy.”
