In a fierce attack on the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday, November 5, 2025, alleged massive electoral fraud in the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections, claiming that 25 lakh fake or duplicate voters were fraudulently inserted into the state’s electoral rolls to convert a “Congress landslide victory into a BJP win.”
Unveiling what he called “The H Files”, Gandhi said the data collected by his team over months reveals a centrally coordinated operation to manipulate voter lists and subvert democracy itself. “This is not an accident. This is not about one booth or one constituency. It is a centralised operation to steal elections,” he declared at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters in Delhi, a day before the Bihar Assembly elections begin.
“One in eight voters fake”: Rahul Gandhi
According to Gandhi, Haryana, with roughly two crore registered voters, had about 25.4 lakh bogus entries — meaning “one in every eight voters is fake.”
He said his team had classified the fake voters under five categories:
- 5.2 lakh duplicate voters,
- 93,174 invalid addresses,
- 19.2 lakh bulk voters (20 or more voters registered at the same address), and
- Several others linked to misuse of Form 6 (additions) and Form 7 (deletions).
“Despite clear technical capacity to detect duplicates, the ECI deliberately refused to run even a basic photo-identity matching query,” Gandhi alleged. “Why? Because they are helping the BJP.”
The ‘Brazilian Model’ case and recycled photos
Displaying a presentation with screenshots from the official voter database, Gandhi held up a photo of a woman he said is a Brazilian model, alleging that her image was used to create 22 separate voter IDs across 10 polling booths in Haryana. “What is a Brazilian woman doing on a voters’ list in Haryana?” he asked.
He further claimed that in some cases, the same photograph appeared 223 times across different constituencies. “This is just one example. There are thousands more. This is not voter error — this is organised fraud,” he asserted.
The Congress leader ridiculed Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s explanation that voter IDs bearing “House No. 0” are reserved for homeless citizens. “We physically went to those addresses,” Gandhi said, showing a two-storey house listed as ‘House No. 0’. “This is not homelessness. This is hiding. The CEC is lying to the people of India.”
In one instance, Gandhi said, 501 voters were registered under a single address, calling it “statistical proof of systematic rigging.”
“Operation sarkar chori”: Rahul Gandhi
Calling the alleged operation “Sarkar Chori” (Government Theft), Gandhi said the manipulation was engineered to deny the Congress victory despite exit polls and internal assessments predicting a landslide win for his party.
“The Congress was poised to win comfortably, but they converted a victory into defeat through data manipulation,” he said, noting that in at least eight key constituencies, the BJP’s margin of victory was under 23,000 votes, while over 25 lakh fraudulent entries existed across the state.
“These eight seats — Uchana Kalan, Dadri, Rai, and others — were the difference between Congress forming the government and BJP stealing it,” Gandhi said.
Allegations against Election Commission
Gandhi accused the Election Commission of being “in partnership with the Prime Minister and Home Minister” in “destroying Indian democracy.”
He alleged that the poll body not only ignored evidence of fake and duplicate voters but also destroyed CCTV footage from polling stations to erase proof.
“The ECI can remove duplicate entries in seconds. All they have to do is run a query to identify identical photos or addresses. They don’t, because they’re complicit,” he said, calling the Commission a “collaborator in vote theft.”
Responding to ECI’s earlier defence that “no voter deletion can be done online,” Gandhi retorted that his team had used the Commission’s own data to trace these irregularities. “We are not fabricating anything. We are exposing what the ECI’s own numbers reveal,” he said.
“Industrialised vote theft”: Rahul Gandhi
Terming the manipulation “industrialised”, Gandhi said the same centralised pattern was visible in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, adding that the Congress had first detected the scam in Mahadevapura and Aland Assembly constituencies in Karnataka.
“In Aland, fake login IDs and mobile numbers were used to delete voters remotely. In Mahadevapura, over one lakh names were found to be either deleted or duplicated. We saw the same pattern in Haryana — that’s when we realised this is national-scale rigging,” Gandhi said.
He added that the same strategy was now being deployed in Bihar, where 47 lakh names were deleted during the recent voter list revision. Several affected voters from Bihar’s Jamui district joined Gandhi on stage, claiming their names were removed without notice.
“Thousands of BJP Voters in Two States”
Gandhi also claimed that thousands of BJP leaders and workers were registered in multiple states. “They are voting in both Uttar Pradesh and Haryana,” he said, citing examples of party office-bearers with dual entries.
To underline this, he played a video of BJP Kerala Vice President B. Gopalakrishnan, who had in August openly stated that his party would “bring voters from other states and settle them for a year to ensure victory.”
BJP’s counter and EC’s response
The BJP dismissed Gandhi’s allegations as a “fabricated conspiracy”, timed to influence the Bihar polls. Union Minister Kiren Rijiju said, “This is a planned diversion. According to Hindustan Times, Rijiju said that the Opposition has no issue left in Bihar, so they are attacking institutions. Questioning the Election Commission and our democracy means questioning the country itself.”
Meanwhile, Election Commission officials, responding during the press conference, said there had been “zero appeals” against electoral rolls in Haryana and questioned the Congress’s polling agents for not objecting at booths. “If someone votes twice, agents can object on the spot. Why did they not?” an EC source asked.
The Commission reiterated that Gandhi’s earlier claims about voter deletions in Karnataka were “incorrect and baseless.”
Wider reactions
The explosive allegations drew backing from opposition leaders. Aditya Thackeray, leader of the Shiv Sena (UBT), said the issue “transcends party politics” and concerns “the value of every Indian’s vote.”
“Once again, Rahul Gandhi has exposed the Election Commission’s fraud that helps the BJP capture states via vote theft,” Thackeray said on X (formerly Twitter). “The world is watching how our elections are no longer free and fair. This is not about parties — this is about democracy itself.”
He added that his party had also flagged similar voter list manipulation in Maharashtra, including Worli and other constituencies, but “the EC refused to act.”
“This fight is not just for the Congress,” Thackeray said, “it’s for free and fair elections across India — for our Constitution and democracy. Vote chor, gaddi chhod (vote thieves, vacate power).”
Once again, @RahulGandhi has exposed the @ECISVEEP ’s fraud today that helps the bjp to capture States via vote theft.
The world is watching how our elections aren’t free and fair anymore… with proof!
One may agree or disagree with Rahul Gandhi, or the @INCIndia or the INDIA…
— Aaditya Thackeray (@AUThackeray) November 5, 2025
“We are protecting democracy”: Rahul Gandhi
In his closing remarks, Gandhi urged the youth to take ownership of India’s democratic future. “I want Gen Z to take this seriously. Your vote, your future, your democracy — all are being stolen in plain sight,” he said.
He invited journalists and citizens alike to independently verify his findings, saying, “We are not afraid. We are exposing the truth in front of the Supreme Court, before the people, not behind closed doors.”
Calling “vote chori” the theft of rights, employment, education, and the Constitution itself, Gandhi said: “This democracy belongs to you, not to the Election Commission or Narendra Modi. We will fight this with satya and ahimsa.”
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Rahul Gandhi alleges ‘Vote Chori’ in 2024 polls, accuses BJP-ECI nexus of systematic electoral fraud