The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday sharply responded to statements made by Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, and other INDIA bloc leaders, wherein they repeatedly alleged "vote chori" and used the language that the ECI referred to as "dirty language" designed to create a false narrative.
The ECI stated that these statements are a direct assault on millions of voters in India and an assault on hundreds of thousands of election officials.
The ECI reaffirmed that the concept of "One Person, One Vote" has been in place since India had an electoral process, starting its first elections in 1951-52.
The ECI explained that if someone has evidence to show that a person has voted more than once, then they should provide that evidence to the commission with an affidavit, and not use the term "chor" when speaking about all voters to create confusion.
Rahul Gandhi presented a report at a news conference in New Delhi on August 7, that claimed some form of "vote chori" happened in the Mahadevapura assembly segment of Karnataka. He claimed as many as 1 lakh votes or more were "stolen" through means such as duplicate entries registered in fiction addresses, and bulk registrations with one single location listed as the registration location.
"Our internal polling predicted 16 Lok Sabha seats for Congress in Karnataka; we won nine. In Mahadevapura alone, we found 100,250 votes stolen in five different ways," Gandhi had said, presenting what he called Congress’s internal analysis of voting patterns.Later, the election commission asked Rahul Gandhi to submit a formal declaration supporting his "vote chori" (vote theft) claim, along with the names of electors allegedly wrongfully included in the voter list, in order to initiate necessary proceedings.
Reacting to the election commission, Rahul said: "I'm saying it publicly to everybody. Take it as an oath. This is their data, and we are displaying their data. This is not our data".
"Interestingly, they haven't denied the information," he further said. "I'm a politician. What I say to the people is my word. I'm saying it publicly to everybody. Take it as an oath. This is their data, and we are displaying their data. This is not our data. This is Election Commission data. Interestingly, they haven't denied the information. They haven't told the voter list that Rahul Gandhi is talking about are wrong. Why don't you say they wrong? Because you know the truth. You know that we know that you have done this across the country," the Congress leader told news agency ANI.
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