When one can’t win a competition, blame the game, the referee, the opponent, and concoct an outrage so strong that covers up their own incompetence and posits them a forced-to-lose ‘Hero’.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s recent escalation of attacks on the Election Commission of India suggests that the Gandhi scion is trying hard to pull off this gimmick. While the opposition has been selectively outraging over election results in the recent past and gladly accepting the same when it wins, the timing of Rahul Gandhi’s fresh ‘vote chori’ bogey, raises the question: Is Rahul Gandhi planning to go the Khaleda Zia way?
Joined by the opposition parties, Congress prince Rahul Gandhi has been unfounded allegations about the EVMs, VVPATs, electoral roll, fake voters and whatnot to establish a false narrative that the ECI is colluding with the Bhartiya Janata Party to manipulate voter lists and rig elections.
As Rahul Gandhi continued his full of hollow rhetoric and theatrics, devoid of evidence attacks on the Election Commission, the poll body issued a strong statement calling his allegations “baseless” and demanded that Gandhi either substantiate his allegations with evidence under oath or apologise. On 11th August, the I.N.D.I. Alliance marched to the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) New Delhi headquarters, protesting against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the Bihar electoral registers and at the same time claiming ‘vote chori’ and voter list discrepancies. They claimed that the drive would result in disenfranchisement and charged that was an attempt by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led-government to steal votes.
The Bihar SIR exercise program has a significant number of fraudulent voters in Bihar. It uncovered around 65 lakh non-existent voters who were then purged from the electoral rolls. The names that have been deleted are mostly those of people who have passed away or who were not found at their registered addresses. The opposition in the state has been mobilizing since the initiative was announced. A significant number of these counterfeit voters are their supporters.
Now, a similar drive is set to occur in West Bengal which has alarmed the All India Trinamool Congress and its supremo, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who has been an outspoken advocate for Bangladeshi infiltrators. The IIM researchers who had warned about around 70 lakh fake voters in Bihar, an estimate that was found nearly correct, have now in another study highlighted that voters in may be existing in the electoral roll for West Bengal in 2024.
While the general public rejected Rahul Gandhi’s ‘vote chori’ narrative following the Maharashtra assembly elections and ‘EVM hacking, VVPAT tampering’ claims after the Lok Sabha elections, the Gandhi scion renewed his attacks on ECI after the alarming results of SIR in Bihar exposed the presence of thousands of lakhs of voters in the electoral roll. Now that the ECI plans to conduct SIR in every state, the opposition is fuming.
Mahadevpura voter fraud claims found to be baseless
Rahul Gandhi made special mention of Karnataka’s Mahadevpura constituency to allege electoral fraud saying that several voter entries in the voter list had “house number 0” and that numerous voters were listed at the same address during a press conference on 7th August. However, the ECI debunked his claims. Gandhi claimed that 80 fake voters were registered at one house in Mahadevpura, but it turned out that they were not fraudulent but migrant voters.
The Gandhi scion’s attacks on the ECI have though failed to stir outrage among common Indian voters, have found audience in the leftist foreign media. As OpIndia earlier, New York Times, Al Jazeera, and others have amplified Rahul Gandhi’s bogus ‘vote chori’ claim, apparently, to discredit India’s democratic institutions.
The foreign and Indian leftist media is amplifying Rahul Gandhi’s ‘vote chori’ lies, the Congress leader refuses to submit formal complaints or affidavits, aruging that his parliamentary oath suffices as evidence of truthfulness. However, this refusal confirms that Rahul Gandhi’s campaign against supposed ‘vote chori’ is more about public spectacle than legal recourse.
The opposition seems to be following the strategy of keeping the issue alive in public domain while avoiding engagement in procedural battles since their lies would get exposed, as happened in the Supreme Court recently and earlier during EVM hacking allegations, diluting the impact of their manufactured outrage.
Is Rahul Gandhi laying ground for boycott of elections as BNP leader Khaleda Zia did in Bangladesh?
The Congress party’s unannounced forever PM aspirant, has also threatened the ECI of ‘consequences’. This is alarming. This is more than just political theatrics, attempt at deflecting from Congress’s electoral failures, or a gimmick meant for immediate electoral gains. Is Rahul Gandhi sowing long-term distrust in India’s democratic institutions? Is the Congress leader, joined by the anti-BJP parties, laying the groundwork for a more radical and destructive political manoeuvre, an election boycott? Is Rahul Gandhi planning to replicate the Khaleda Zia playbook?
It is notable that in Bangladesh, Khaleda Zia, the leader of the anti-Hindu Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), a direct opponent of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League and India detractor, boycotted the 2014, 2018 and 2023 elections claiming that free and fair elections cannot take place under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s watch. Massive protests were taken out, violence and chaos erupted in 2023. In 2018, several people lost their lives in violent protests and in 2014 elections, the Hindu minorities were attacked and killed by BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami members.
There is no doubt that India’s political landscape is different from Bangladesh. India is home to one of the most robust democracies in the world. The Election Commission here enjoys large public trust. The ECI has a history of competitive elections. Time and again, the Supreme Court while hearing petitions moved by pro-Congress ‘activists’ and self-declared ‘defenders of democracy’, has backed the ECI against allegations of fraud and conspiracies to favour the BJP.
However, the apprehensions are not unfounded that the opposition, especially Rahul Gandhi, might try to pull a Khaleda Zia playbook: sow distrust in public’s mind against electoral process, boycott the elections, incite violent protests and oust the demoratically elected leader, to become the sole runner in the race of power and come first.
OpIndia has reported many a times how Rahul Gandhi during his foreign trips has been seeking foreign intervention in India’s internal affairs, levelling ‘Democracy khatre mein hai’ allegations, casting aspersions on the integrity of the ECI while on foreign soil. From seeking foreign interference to relying on dubious foreign reports to attack Indian businessmen like Gautam Adani, eulogising China to even recently parroting US President Donald Trump’s ‘India’s a dead economy’ jibe. It seems that a colour revolution may be on the cards.
Amidst Trump’s tariff war against India for buying Russian oil and the Modi government’s strong refusal to open India’s agriculture and dairy markets for the US, PM Modi had recently said that he is for protecting the interests of Indian farmers. Although he made no explicit mention of a regime change conspiracy at play, however, speculations are rife that the US, given it has a history of orchestrating regime change in countries where its economic or strategic interests are challenged, might attempt the same strategy to oust Modi and install its puppet in New Delhi. A potential attempt at this cannot be overlooked as, the case of Bangladesh is front of the world.
Months after Sheikh Hasina alleged that the US is conspiring to oust her from Prime Minister’s post and fanning anti-government protests, she was forced to quit and flee the country. After days of chaos, anti-Hindu violence, targeted killings of Awami League leaders, and a political vaccum, a pro-US Muhammad Yunus became the leader of the interim government. Now, elections are set to be held in Bangladesh in early 2026. With Awami League nearly erased, its backbone broken, offices abandoned, leaders killed, Khaleda Zia’s BNP and supportive Jamaat-e-Islami are set to grab power unopposed.
With state elections looming in Bihar, West Bengal in the coming times, it remains to be seen if Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Vote Chori’ allegations and anti-ECI campaign is only to keep the BJP on defensive, or a groundwork towards unfolding of a broader playbook of boycotting elections, stirring violent protests, and orchestrating a regime change. Eventually, after a phase of violence and uncertainty, just as Khaleda Zia removed her competition, Sheikh Hasina, from the race and is now set to run alone and come first, is Rahul Gandhi trying to do the same?