New Delhi, Sep 18 (IANS) Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi on Thursday launched a fresh offensive on the Election Commission of India, claiming that votes were being deleted from the Congress booths through fake logins done through a ‘centralised system’. However, he remained evasive on questions of following it up with the ECI or taking legal recourse for the ‘irregularities and wrongdoings’ under the watch of the poll panel. On an IANS question whether the party will move court over illegal deletion of votes, the Congress leader averted a direct reply and said he was a committed soldier of democracy and would always strive to uphold the constitutional values.

Notably, this was Rahul Gandhi’s second special press conference in recent months, where he questioned the sanctity of the electoral process and claimed voter deletions in Congress booths in Karnataka’s Aland. A month ago, he claimed ‘votes were stolen’ in the Mahadevpura Assembly constituency. In Thursday’s press conference titled ‘Democracy can’t be deleted’, Rahul Gandhi alleged that Congress' stronghold in Karnataka has seen large-scale voter deletions and this was done through fake logins and phone numbers from outside the state. He also claimed that software, instead of individuals, was being deployed to delete voters from the list.

Launching a frontal charge at the CEC, he accused the latter of protecting ‘vote chors’ by not providing details sought by the Karnataka CID to investigate voter deletions. With ‘chronology samajhiye’ in the backdrop, the Congress leader demanded that the ECI release the data of these phone numbers and the OTPs within a week and said, "CEC Gyanesh Kumar must stop protecting people who are destroying and attacking the constitution". Gandhi claimed that such vote deletions were happening everywhere and named Karnataka’s Aland constituency, in particular, where he claimed that 6,018 voters were deleted. He said that the votes of the Scheduled Caste, the Scheduled Tribes and marginalised communities were being targeted with a motive to benefit a certain party.

He said that there is solid and absolute proof of voter deletions by means of fake logins, claiming that a ‘centralised model’ was deleting votes in Congress booths, by using call centres. He claimed that the ‘crime’ came to light after a BLO in Karnataka’s Aland found that the name of one of her relatives was deleted from the electoral rolls. He said that the deletion of 6,018 votes in Karantaka is currently under investigation. “Karnataka EC started an enquiry into alleged vote deletions and wrote at least 18 letters demanding clarification on it, and also the reason for such deletions. In February 2023, the investigations began. In March, Karnataka CID demanded details, including OTP and call record details, which it got in August 2023, but were incomplete and inadequate. Karnataka EC also sought details on IP addresses and information about the framework engaged in the vote deletion,” he told the media.

He further claimed that the CEC is in the know of everything but deliberately stays silent on the issue. He further said that a similar technique was used for voter additions in Maharashtra’s Rajoura constituency. On his previous threats of a ‘Hydrogen bomb’ that would expose the government, he said that preparations for it are underway, and very soon, it will be made public once his team gathers all the proof and evidence of ‘electoral malpractices’.