Published Aug 10, 2025 | 7:39 PM ⚊ Updated Aug 10, 2025 | 7:39 PM
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi accused the Election Commission of failing to safeguard the sanctity of the vote.
Synopsis: The Election Commission of India has issued a notice to Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, asking him to produce documents supporting his allegation that a voter in Karnataka cast her vote twice under different voter IDs during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka stated that the voter denied the claim and that a preliminary inquiry indicated the document shown by Gandhi was not issued by a polling officer.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has issued a notice to Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, asking him to furnish documents to support one of the many allegations he made during his press conference earlier this week in Delhi, where he detailed what he termed as “vote chori” during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The particular allegation concerns a voter named Shakun Rani, who was featured in Gandhi’s presentation, where he claimed that she voted twice under two different voter IDs with slightly differing personal details and photographs.
“You have said; ‘This is EC data’. You have also stated that as per the records given by the polling officer, Smt Shakun Rani has voted twice. On inquiry, Smt Shakun Rani has stated that she has voted only once and not twice, as alleged by you,” the Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka, wrote in a letter addressed to the Congress leader, dated Sunday, 10 August.
The CEO claimed that the voter in question denied voting twice as alleged by Gandhi, and therefore asked for the basis of Gandhi’s conclusion to the contrary.
“Preliminary enquiry conducted by this office also reveals that the tick-marked document shown by you in the presentation (copy enclosed) is not a document issued by the polling officer,” the letter reads.
“Therefore, you are kindly requested to provide the relevant documents on the basis of which you have concluded that Smt Shakun Rani or anyone else has voted twice, so that a detailed enquiry can be undertaken by this office.”
Notice to Shri Rahul Gandhi, Hon’ble Member of Parliament and LoP, Lok Sabha.@ECISVEEP pic.twitter.com/plSfgoeytZ
— Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka (@ceo_karnataka) August 10, 2025
Weeks after he began alleging widespread voter fraud during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday presented detailed data to support his claims, focusing on two assembly segments within a Bengaluru constituency. He accused the Election Commission of India of colluding with the BJP to swing results in favour of the saffron party.
He said Opposition INDIA bloc partners suspected vote rigging after changes to polling dates in some states.
An analysis of the voters’ list and polling data from the Mahadevapura Assembly segment in Bengaluru Central, according to Gandhi, revealed irregularities involving 1,00,250 votes. He pointed out instances such as 80 voters registered at a single address and 46 unrelated individuals at another.
He also claimed that the BJP won 25 Lok Sabha seats with a margin of less than 33,000 votes.
The day after his press conference, Gandhi addressed the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee’s ‘Vote Adhikar Rally’ at Freedom Park, accusing the ECI of “behaving like a BJP agent.”
(Edited by Dese Gowda)
