Rahul Gandhi Accuses EC-BJP of Electoral Manipulation in Bihar

PTI, ARARIA (BIHAR), AUG 24, 2025 :  Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday charged the Election Commission with having a "partnership" with the ruling BJP at the Centre, and vowed to thwart "institutionalised theft of votes" in the guise of special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bihar.

A week into the fortnight-long 'Voter Adhikar Yatra', Gandhi also seemed delighted at the response, claiming that people were taking part "organically, without being asked to do so", and that the slogan 'vote chor, gaddi chhod' (vote thief, vacate your seat of power) was now on the lips of "even six-year-old children".

The Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha wound up the second leg of the yatra, which will now resume on Tuesday, with a press conference in Araria district, where he reached from adjoining Purnea in an impromptu motorcycle rally.

The Congress leader deftly side-stepped a pointed question about the reluctance to declare RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, seated by his side, as the chief ministerial candidate even though the latter had recently made an open pitch for making Gandhi the Prime Minister after the next Lok Sabha polls.

"All INDIA bloc partners are working together in a spirit of mutual respect, without any tension. We will contest the polls together and the results will be good," Gandhi said.

He also disclosed that a "manifesto committee" was at work for the upcoming assembly polls, which would focus on providing security to farmers who were in need of better storage facilities and relief from the burden of debt. "These were also the things we had promised in our national manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls held last year," the Rae Bareli MP pointed out.

"Votes were stolen in Maharashtra, Haryana and Karnataka, and the Election Commission was quick to demand an affidavit from me. Just a few days later, BJP leader Anurag Thakur made allegations which were of a similar nature, but no affidavit was sought from him. Also, in Bihar, where names of 65 lakh people have been deleted from the draft electoral rolls, the BJP has not made a whimper. All these point to a clandestine partnership between the BJP and the Election Commission," Gandhi alleged.

Rubbishing the charge that he was tarnishing the image of the EC by alleging 'vote chori' (vote theft), the Congress leader said that even six-year-olds in Bihar can be heard raising the slogan 'vote chor, gaddi chhod'.

"Clearly, there is a sentiment against special intensive revision (SIR), which is nothing but an institutionalised attempt to steal votes. And we would not let that happen," he said.

On the yatra, he said that so far, it has been successful. "People have been joining us naturally, organically, without any effort on our part to make them take part," Gandhi claimed.

The press conference was also addressed by Yadav and CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, both of whom stressed that the BJP's unwillingness to raise an alarm over the deletion of voters' names on a large scale, "some of whom might have voted for them", confirmed their worst suspicions.

While Yadav mocked the EC as 'Godi Aayog' (a pliant commission), Bhattacharya criticised the BJP's famed machinery, which was "unable to rope in booth-level agents for getting restored in the electoral rolls wrongfully deleted names".

The press conference was preceded by a public meeting, which the leaders addressed from atop an open vehicle.