NEW DELHI, Aug 13: The BJP on Wednesday claimed irregularities in voter registration in Rae Bareli, Wayanad, Diamond Harbour and Kannauj parliamentary seats and asked Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Abhishek Banerjee and Akhilesh Yadav to resign as Lok Sabha MPs, alleging they secured victory with “vote chori”.
It accused the Congress and other opposition parties of running a campaign against the Election Commission to steal the mandate of “honest and genuine Indian citizens” while compromising national security.
Giving a slideshow presentation at the BJP headquarters here on an ‘analysis’ of electoral rolls in these constituencies represented by opposition leaders, former Union minister Anurag Thakur also flagged “irregularities” in the voter registration in Kolathur assembly seat in Tamil Nadu and Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh, and asked Chief Minister and DMK supremo M K Stalin and SP leader Dimple Yadav to resign for “rigging” election.
He slammed the Congress, TMC, Samajwadi Party and DMK leaders for raising questions on the Election Commission and accused them of running a vicious propaganda against the special intensive revision (SIR) of the elector rolls, which is currently underway in Bihar and would be launched in other states, to protect their “vote bank of illegal Bangladeshi infiltration” and other “intruders”.
“Seeing this ‘shor’ (hue and cry) being made by the opposition, it now seems that ‘chor machaye shor’”, he said, suggesting those who are in the wrong are now crying foul.
“Rae Bareli, Wayanad, Kannuaj, to Diamond Harbour — everywhere one question is coming up — why did they make fake voters. Will they resign for indulging in ‘vote chori’ and protecting intruders?” Thakur said.
The Congress and other opposition parties are running the campaign against the poll panel to steal the mandate of “honest and genuine Indian citizens” for their appeasement politics while compromising the national security and weakening democracy in the country, he charged.
Levelling allegations of “vote chori”, Rahul Gandhi had on Thursday, through a presentation at a press conference, cited data from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to claim that over 1 lakh votes were “stolen” in Mahadevapura assembly segment in Karnataka through five types of manipulation, including duplicate voters, fake and invalid addresses and single-address voters.
Thakur lambasted the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha over his “vote chori” charge against the ruling BJP and the Election Commission, calling him a “propaganda king”.
“This country will not be shaken by your agenda and propaganda. You will not be able to create any storm, because every step of yours will actually prove to be a new blunder,” he said, accusing Gandhi of “peddling lies and misleading people” with his baseless claims.
Thakur claimed irregularities in the voter registration in Gandhi’s Rae Bareli Lok Sabha constituency and asked the Congress leader if he did “vote chori” to get elected from this seat in Uttar Pradesh in the 2024 parliamentary elections.
About 2.99 lakh “doubtful voters” were registered in the Rae Bareli constituency, Thakur alleged.
Of them, about 19,512 entries are duplicate voters, 71,977 voters have fake addresses, 15,853 voters showed mixed households, and 92,747 voters were listed via mass addition, he claimed.
Reading the names of some of such voters, the BJP leader said, “One Mohd Kaif Khan has three different EPICs.” “So you arrange fake birth certificates and make voters by doing such ‘farziwada’ (forgery) and when the Election Commission talks about cleaning of electoral rolls, you try to stop reforms to protect your intruder vote banks, special vote banks,” he charged.
The BJP leader said about 93,499 “doubtful voters” were registered in Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency in Kerala, from where Priyanka Gandhi was elected.
Of them, 20,438 are duplicates, 17,450 voters have fake addresses, 4,246 voters have mixed households and 51,365 voters listed through mass addition, he said and asked Priyanka Gandhi if she would resign as Lok Sabha member.
Thakur alleged that the Congress started the “tradition of rigging elections” in 1952 and continued it by indulging in various electoral malpractices like booth capturing and misuse of government machinery during its terms.
He asked Gandhi to “introspect” why his party lost as many 90 elections under his leadership, instead of “abusing and insulting” voters who gave their mandate to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his work.
Citing irregularities in the voter registration in the seats from where TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee has won, Thakur said the number of doubtful voters registered in the Diamond Harbour parliamentary constituency was more than 2.69 lakh.There were more than 2.51 lakh such voters in the Kannauj seat and over 2.55 lakh in the Mainpuri seat, he claimed about the constituencies represented by SP’s Akhilesh and Dimpal Yadav.
In the electoral roll of Tamil Nadu’s Kolathur assembly seat from where Stalin won, there were 19,776 doubtful voters, with 9,133 voters giving fake addresses, he claimed and asked the DMK chief if he would resign for such irregularities in the voter registration.
On Tuesday, opposition leaders took out a protest march from the Parliament House to the Election Commission’s headquarters here on the issue of “vote theft” and special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, but were stopped and briefly detained by the police.
The Congress on Wednesday stepped up its campaign against alleged ‘vote chori’ by releasing a new video depicting how “fake votes” were being cast, with party chief Mallikarjun Kharge asking people to raise their voice and save constitutional institutions from the “clutches of the BJP”.
Gandhi also shared the minute-long video and said, “Aapke vote ki chori aapke adhikar ki chori, aapki pehchaan ki chori hai”. (PTI)
