“When the voter list revision happened, we were in power. It is our fault for not verifying it properly,” said Congress minister K.N. Rajanna in response to Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of voter fraud in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency. The Congress high command, angered that Rajanna had “exposed their foolishness,” immediately removed him from his post. Yet, Rajanna’s question is on everyone’s mind.

If the Congress party is in power in Karnataka now, how could voter fraud have happened in a way that would benefit the opposition? Before the Congress victory in the Assembly elections, the BJP was in power. If the BJP could have won by manipulating the voter list, why did they lose? And how did Congress win? Rahul Gandhi seems to have missed this logic, but the people have not.

Normally, opposition leaders attack the ruling party to win public support and come to power. In our country’s politics, this opposition leader is different; he targets the Election Commission. Rahul claimed that, based on his own investigation, the voter list in Mahadevapura contained irregularities. Yet, he is unwilling to affirm his findings as definite truth. The Election Commission asked him to formally file a complaint and submit an affidavit, but Rahul refused.

Strategically, this was a mistake. If he wanted to expose voter list issues, he should have picked a state where Congress lost, such as Haryana or Maharashtra, especially since he complains that exit polls in those states predicted a Congress win but the party lost instead. Targeting Karnataka, where Congress is in power, is baffling.

Mahadevapura is entirely urban, part of Bengaluru, an employment hub where people migrate from across India and register as voters even if they are still registered in their home states. This is why voter turnout in metros rarely crosses 50 percent, the same is true for Hyderabad. Rahul claims that out of Mahadevapura’s 6.5 lakh voters, one lakh are fake. Whether this is true will be revealed in investigations. However, minor errors in voter lists cannot change election outcomes.

Rahul also alleges rigging after 5 PM, but such a thing would require the cooperation of thousands of people, which is impossible in the election process. Moreover, in Karnataka, Congress has strong cadre representation at every polling booth until the EVM is sealed. How, then, could rigging occur?

Media fact-checking of Rahul’s claims revealed that while some addresses listed many voters, those people were actually migrant workers who had registered with rental agreements but later moved away. Their names remained on the list, as is common in cities. Duplicate votes, votes of deceased persons, and other such errors are common nationwide.

Ironically, Rahul opposes the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, currently underway in Bihar, which aims to fix such irregularities. Instead of demanding a nationwide SIR to clean all voter lists, Rahul attacks the Election Commission. The real solution is linking voter ID with Aadhaar, but when this was attempted earlier, Rahul opposed it, filing court cases and stopping the process.

From 2004 to 2014, Congress was in power. Yet, despite having the authority, Rahul did not implement these reforms. In fact, he once tore up an ordinance approved by his own cabinet in front of the media, humiliating his own Prime Minister.

Rahul used to blame EVMs for Congress’s losses, but suddenly he has shifted to voter lists. If he truly doubts both EVMs and voter lists, he should reject the Telangana election results, where Congress came to power in 2023 despite losing deposits in many previous contests, including the Munugode bypoll just a year earlier.

In Bihar, illegal immigrants are being turned into a “vote bank,” threatening national security. In Bengal, Mamata Banerjee is allegedly sheltering Bangladeshi Muslims to convert them into voters. Rahul and his allies, knowingly or unknowingly, are part of this “mind game” to stop the EC from removing such names from voter lists.

The Election Commission is the guardian of India’s democratic foundations, and public trust in it is vital. Rahul Gandhi, by magnifying minor voter list errors, is attempting to damage the EC’s credibility, thereby weakening democracy itself. As the heir of the Congress party, who has yet to deliver a single decisive victory, he is trying to shift the blame for his failures onto the EC. But the public is seeing through this.

The Supreme Court even remarked, in reference to Rahul’s statements, “If you are a true Indian, you would not make such comments.” The question now resonates nationwide: why does Rahul take India’s internal issues to the global stage, giving anti-India forces ammunition?

If Rahul were a true Indian, would he conspire against the very foundations of our democracy? Would he attack the EC with baseless allegations? This attempt to weaken India must be defeated by the people themselves.

(The writer is Vice President, Andhra Pradesh BJP)