NEW DELHI, Nov 5: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday alleged large-scale voter fraud in Haryana’s 2024 Assembly elections, claiming that over 25 lakh entries in the electoral rolls were “fake,” effectively “stealing” a Congress victory through a coordinated operation he termed “Operation Sarkar Chori.”

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Gandhi accused the Election Commission (EC) of colluding with the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to manipulate the outcome. “One in eight voters in Haryana are fake. We have 100% proof,” he declared, displaying documents and voter list extracts to back his claims.

According to Gandhi, the Congress’ internal review found 25,41,144 duplicate or invalid voter entries, including people registered multiple times, entries with non-existent addresses, and even a photo allegedly taken from a woman in Brazil used 22 times in different booths. “The CEC lied when he said ‘house number zero’ is for homeless voters — that’s false,” he said.

The Congress leader cited pre-poll surveys and exit polls that had projected a clear Congress win, arguing that the final results were “statistically impossible” given discrepancies in postal ballots. “In postal votes, Congress got 73 seats while BJP got 17 — yet we lost by thin margins in eight key constituencies,” he said, alleging tampering at both state and national levels.

He also accused the BJP of orchestrating cross-voting between Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, adding that Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini’s pre-counting remark — “we have a system in place” — was proof of a planned manipulation.

Responding to the allegations, Election Commission of India (ECI) officials dismissed them as “baseless and politically motivated.” An ECI source said, “If there were fake or duplicate entries, why did Congress’ booth-level agents not raise objections during voter list verification?” Officials noted that no formal claims or appeals were filed by the Congress during the roll revision process.

This is not Gandhi’s first allegation of electoral manipulation. Earlier, he accused the EC of deleting Congress supporters’ names in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura and Aland constituencies, claiming that “democracy is being systematically dismantled.”

Gandhi concluded by appealing to young voters: “Your future is being stolen. This isn’t just about one election — it’s about the soul of Indian democracy.”