Rush Hour: Rahul Gandhi alleges EC colluded with BJP, 274 rescued in Uttarkashi and more

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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that party workers had combed through the electoral rolls of the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency in Central Bangalore and allegedly found discrepancies in more than one lakh names.

This, he claimed, was evidence that the Election Commission had colluded with the Bharatiya Janata Party in “destroying the election system”.

Gandhi alleged that there were 11,965 duplicate voters on the rolls of the constituency, 40,009 electors with fake or invalid addresses, 10,454 “bulk voters” registered at the same address, 4,132 with invalid photographs and 33,692 in whose cases voter registration forms had been misused.

The BJP had won the Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha constituency in the general election last year.

The Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka asked Gandhi to send the names of electors who had been allegedly wrongly included or excluded “so that necessary proceedings can be initiated”. The official asked Gandhi to sign an oath for each such name, adding that making false declarations was an offence.

In response, Gandhi said that the Election Commission had not denied his claims. Read more.

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