NEW DELHI: Indian Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said the country’s electoral system suffers from ‘serious discrepancies’ and vowed to challenge its integrity through public mobilisation and courts.
The leader of the Congress Party recently accused Indian authorities of manipulating voter rolls by adding fake names during the 2024 general election and other recent polls.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which underperformed in the national election and was forced to rely on coalition partners to form a government, subsequently secured comfortable victories in several state elections.
Both the BJP and the Election Commission have strongly rejected the allegations of electoral fraud—claims that remain uncommon in India, the world’s most populous democracy with a population of 1.42 billion.
“There are serious discrepancies in the election system, and we will diligently keep exposing them,” Gandhi told reporters.
“We do not want to discredit the election process of India, so we are doing it slowly and deliberately,” he said.
He added said the party’s strategy was focused on mounting public pressure. “We mainly want to challenge the Election Commission through the people, but could eventually go to court,” he noted.
“If elections are rigged, no amount of cadre mobilisation will work. The game we are playing is rigged,” Gandhi said, when asked by Reuters news agency if the opposition alliance could oust Modi in the next national election in 2029.
His remarks come ahead of a closely contested state election in Bihar.
Bihar, one of India’s most politically significant states, is set to hold elections by November. Although currently governed by an alliance led by Prime Minister Modi’s party, a recent survey by the VoteVibe agency suggests the opposition holds a slight advantage—primarily due to widespread unemployment.
It may be recalled that senior leaders of India’s opposition, including Rahul Gandhi, were detained in Delhi during a protest march to the Election Commission on Monday. The Congress-led INDIA bloc organised the rally to challenge alleged voter fraud and what they call collusion between the poll body and the ruling BJP.
Delhi Police detained senior opposition MPs, including the Congress’ Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut, as their protests over the Election Commission’s “collusion” with the ruling BJP spilled over into the streets of central Delhi.
