Election system 'already dead' in country: Rahul

New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said he will soon release an "atom bomb" of data that will send shockwaves through the election system, alleging that it is "already dead" and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were "rigged". Addressing the inaugural function of the day-long legal conclave on the theme 'Constitutional Challenges: Perspectives and Pathways', he also claimed that the prime minister is sitting on his chair with a "thin majority" and had there been a difference of a few seats, he would have not been there. Gandhi cited data collected by the Congress from an assembly constituency in Karnataka, where the party checked the photographs and names of electors physically and reportedly found out that 1.5 lakh votes were "fake" out of a total of 6.5 lakh voters. "You will see the shockwave that is going to go through the electoral system when we release this data. It is literally like an atom bomb," the Congress leader claimed.

"The truth is that the election system in India is already dead. Please remember one thing that the prime minister of India enjoys a very slim majority. If 10-15 seats were rigged, and we suspect the actual figures to be closer to 70-80 to 100, he would not have been the prime minister of the country," the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha claimed. "In the coming few days, we are going to prove to you without any doubt how a Lok Sabha election can be rigged, and it was rigged," he alleged. Gandhi will make public details of the "anomalies" in voter list in the constituency in Karnataka on August 5 at Bengaluru's Freedom park.

Sharpening his attack on the Election Commission, the former Congress chief said, "It's very clear that the institution that protects this (Constitution), and defends it has been obliterated and taken over." Gandhi also said that he did not have the proof earlier and that is why he could not make such statements before. "But, I am making this statement confidently now because I have 100 per cent proof. And, whoever I have shown it to has fallen off the chair. They literally said how it is possible. But it is possible, it's happening, literally," he claimed. Gandhi said he has been speaking about the election system as he always had a suspicion that there was something wrong. "Right from 2014, I had a suspicion that there is something wrong, something is not adding up. I had suspicions about the Gujarat Assembly elections... About this ability to score sweeping victories. Congress doesn't get a single seat in Rajasthan, doesn't get a single seat in Madhya Pradesh, doesn't get a single seat in Gujarat... This was surprising to me," he said. Gandhi said in Maharashtra three formidable parties "suddenly evaporated" in assembly elections after winning clearly in the Lok Sabha elections a few months ago. Noting that it was in Maharashtra that started to look seriously into electoral malpractice, he said, "We found it clearly that one crore new voters showed up between Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha and bulk of those votes go to the BJP. Still, we didn't have clear proof. When I mentioned to my allies that a clear cheating had happened.