Bhubaneswar, July 11: Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Friday leveled serious allegations against the Election Commission of India (ECI), accusing it of "conspiring to steal elections" in Bihar by revising the electoral rolls ahead of the upcoming state assembly elections.
Speaking at the Samvidhan Bachao Samavesh in Bhubaneswar, Gandhi claimed the ECI was functioning like a "wing of the BJP" and warned of a repeat of what he described as electoral manipulation during the Maharashtra Assembly elections.
“BJP is attacking the Constitution. Yesterday I was in Bihar. Just as elections were stolen in Maharashtra, similar efforts are now underway in Bihar. The Election Commission has devised a new conspiracy to rig the polls. It's no longer acting independently — it’s working as a BJP affiliate,” said Gandhi.
Referring to the Maharashtra elections, where the opposition Mahavikas Aghadi alliance suffered a major defeat, Gandhi alleged that more than 1 crore new voters were added between the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls without transparency.
“In Maharashtra, over 1 crore new voters were mysteriously added to the rolls. Nobody knows who they were or where they came from. We repeatedly asked the ECI to give us access to the voter list and videography, but they refused. The same kind of election theft is being planned in Bihar,” he added.
Gandhi also targeted the Odisha government, accusing it of enriching a few industrialists at the cost of the state’s poor.
“The Odisha government has one agenda — to steal the wealth of the state from the hands of its poor citizens. Earlier, the BJD did this. Now, the BJP is continuing the same practice. On one side, we have the poor people of Odisha — Dalits, tribals, backward communities, farmers, and laborers — and on the other, a handful of billionaires backed by the BJP. This is the real fight. And only Congress workers, along with the people of Odisha, can win it,” he said.
