New Delhi: A 40-member social media team behind Opposition Leader Rahul Gandhi has reportedly uncovered what they claim to be a nationwide “vote theft” through the manipulation of the electoral roll. Their four-month-long effort at an office in Bengaluru led to what they describe as shocking irregularities in the voter list.

Rahul Gandhi has presented detailed data and evidence to support his claim, stating that the Election Commission could no longer be allowed to ignore such electoral discrepancies.

Following the Congress party's underwhelming performance in the recent general elections—including losses in Madhya Pradesh, fewer-than-expected seats in Telangana, Karnataka and Bihar, and a defeat in Haryana—the party began suspecting irregularities in the electoral process. The loss in Haryana, where the margin between the Congress and BJP was just 22,779 votes across eight seats, raised further doubts. Due to the lack of concrete evidence against EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines), the Election Commission had consistently refused to entertain those allegations.

It was in this context that Mansoor Ali Khan, Congress candidate from Bengaluru Central, approached the party high command with suspicions of voter fraud in his constituency. According to AICC general secretary K C Venugopal, Rahul Gandhi then decided to launch a detailed investigation.

'Something fishy': Mansoor Ali Khan’s complaint

Actor-politician Mansoor Ali Khan had entered the electoral fray in Bengaluru Central with a high-profile campaign. Most internal Congress surveys, as well as public opinion and exit polls, had predicted a win for him. Hence, his defeat came as a shock—and raised red flags.

Mansoor pointed out that in seven out of eight assembly segments under his constituency—Sarvagnanagar, C V Raman Nagar, Shivajinagar, Shantinagar, Gandhinagar, Rajajinagar and Chamarajpet—he had a combined lead of 82,000 votes. However, in Mahadevapura, the lone remaining segment, BJP’s P C Mohan gained a staggering lead of 1.15 lakh votes, securing victory. Khan informed Rahul that the result seemed suspicious and indicative of electoral malpractice.

Rahul’s team begins Herculean investigation

Convinced there was something more to the complaint, Rahul assigned around 40 members from his media team to work on the issue in Bengaluru. The Congress party formally requested an electronic copy of the voter list for the Bengaluru Central constituency from the Election Commission—but the request was denied.

Rahul then took the issue to the floor of Parliament, wrote op-eds in media outlets, and spoke at public rallies. Eventually, the Commission relented and provided a hard copy of the voter list.
 

What arrived were paper bundles over 20 feet tall. Two months had already passed by then. The team’s first challenge was to scan and digitise this massive volume of paper. But they soon discovered another hurdle: the papers were not compatible with Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Even after scanning, converting them into usable electronic data was impossible.

This deepened suspicions about the Election Commission’s intent. The team then shifted to manually photographing each page and scanning them—an effort that took four full months. What could’ve been done in seconds with electronic data now became a months-long project. Working from their Bengaluru office, the 40-member team sat at their computers day and night, meticulously creating the digital data required for a voter comparison study.

When they finally analysed the data—comparing names, photos, addresses, father’s names and more—the findings were shocking.

How the votes were allegedly stolen

In Mahadevapura alone, the team claims they uncovered:

1,00,250 stolen votes, broken down as:

  • 11,965 duplicate votes
  • 40,009 fake address votes
  • 10,452 voters listed under the same address
  • 4,132 entries without photos
  • 33,692 voters added through fraudulent use of Form 6, intended for first-time voters
  • Many of these “new voters” had suspiciously high ages — 70, 85, even 95 years old

‘INDIA’ bloc prepares for fightback

The opposition alliance is now preparing to escalate the issue, beginning with a march to the Karnataka Election Commission office on Friday. Rahul Gandhi, at a dinner with INDIA bloc leaders on Thursday night, reportedly urged that the protest must not remain confined to Parliament.

The next step is a march to the Election Commission office in Delhi on Monday. Following that, on September 10, the RJD is scheduled to begin a ‘padayatra’ (foot march) in Patna. At its concluding rally on September 24, INDIA bloc leaders are expected to make a joint declaration against alleged vote theft.