The core issue, as Rahul Gandhi said on January 15, 2025, at the inauguration of the Congress’ new headquarters, Indira Bhawan, in New Delhi, is that the party is not fighting only the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), but the “Indian State itself”. This means the Congress is battling – not the Government of India, the BJP or the RSS – but Bharat itself! It is a sobering thought.
That is the genesis of Congress Party’s Voter Adhikar Yatra that purports to fight for the principle of ‘one man one vote’ and oppose alleged malpractices in the voter list revision in Bihar. Gandhi justified his stand on the ground that the BJP and the RSS had “captured” every major institution in the country (a disgruntled admission that the BJP has been ruling at the Centre for 11 years).
BJP president JP Nadda was quick to pin him down on X: “Hidden no more, Congress’ ugly truth now stands exposed by their own leader. I ‘compliment’ Mr Rahul Gandhi for saying clearly what the nation knows – that he is fighting the Indian state!” Nadda said Gandhi has ties with “urban Naxals” (Maoists) and accused him of working to defame, demean, and discredit Bharat, and to divide society. The Congress, he lamented, has a history of encouraging forces that weaken Bharat’s integrity for political gain.
The Voter Adhikar Yatra began on August 17, 2025, ahead of the Bihar Assembly elections later this year, and as part of a larger narrative to discredit Bharatiya elections in toto. On July 23, 2025, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav threatened to boycott the Assembly elections. Now, the opposition parties have united to challenge the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls, especially the elimination of around 65 lakh voters on account of deaths, migrations, and duplication, with a view to eventually challenging the national-level elections.
Gandhi called the SIR a “conspiracy to steal elections” by adding and deleting votes (vote theft). Hitherto, the Congress claimed that the elections were stolen by tampered Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), and failed to substantiate the same. This irritated the leaders of other opposition parties who protested that the EVMs were fine when an opposition party won but faulty when the BJP won. The Congress has now consigned the EVM issue to the dustbin of history and embraced the tampered electoral rolls narrative with gusto.
Rahul’s claim Boomerangs
Rahul Gandhi’s claims at a press conference in Delhi that one Gurkirat Dang had voted in four different polling booths in his constituency due to “vote theft,” was strenuously denied by the said citizen. Gurkirat Dang called Gandhi a bad loser and demanded that he produce proof to substantiate the allegation that he (Gurkirat) had voted multiple times. (August 17, 2025)
Dang explained that due to rejection issues, “four IDs were mistakenly created, but I had applied for their cancellation as per the rules and regulations of the poll body.” His sister, Kanandeep Kaur Dang, lamented that Rahul Gandhi “bends laws when it suits him. During his presentation, our privacy was breached, the media circus outside our home was invasive. The hypocrisy is glaring.”
A third unexpected embarrassment came when senior journalist Shahid Siddiqui (Nai Duniya, Urdu) told journalist Saurabh Dwivedi (Lallantop) that the rigging of the 1987 election in Jammu and Kashmir was a “terrible mistake” and paved the way for the rise of militancy in the state. The Congress and National Conference had united to fight the elections, leaving the opposition space vacant; this was quickly taken by militant groups. Siddiqui admitted, “I omitted the alleged 1987 election rigging by Rajiv Gandhi because my book was already over 300 pages…”
ECI’s explanation
In Delhi, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar explained that a Supreme Court judgement of 2019 prohibited giving political parties a machine-readable voter list. (August 17, 2025) He said that a voter list on the Election Commission website can be searched by entering the EPIC number which can be downloaded. The machine-readable electoral roll can violate the privacy of the voter, and can be edited and misused.
Clarifying on the revision in Bihar, he said that 22 lakh voters had not died suddenly, but over a period of several years, and those records were not updated. Denying that the SIR was carried out in haste, Gyanesh Kumar said that it was the “EC’s legal duty to correct voter lists before every election.”
Maharashtra recoil
At a rally in Sasaram, Rahul Gandhi explained that the INDI-Alliance had expected to win the Assembly elections in Maharashtra (November 2024) as it had performed well in the Lok Sabha elections. However, the Election Commission “magically” produced one crore new voters and the BJP won.
These claims of rigging in the Maharashtra polls rested on research by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). Using this data, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera asserted, “The Election Commission of India wants us to believe that in just six months between the 2024 Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections in Maharashtra:
- Close of 40 per cent of the electorate died / permanently migrated in Ramtek and Devlali Assembly constituencies
- Around 45 per cent of the electorate suddenly became eligible to vote in Nashik West and Hingna Assembly constituencies
Next, they will announce that 2+2=420.”
Like the recoil from a fired gun, however, the Maharashtra story rebounded painfully. On August 18, 2025, the Supreme Court rejected a petition alleging discrepancies in the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections. Previously, the Bombay High Court had dismissed the petition as it was based solely on a single newspaper report, contained speculative and unsubstantiated claims, and amounted to a gross abuse of the process of law.
Rahul Gandhi’s claims at a press conference in Delhi that one Gurkirat Dang had voted in four different polling booths in his constituency due to “vote theft,” was strenuously denied by the said citizen. Gurkirat Dang called Gandhi a bad loser
Stunned by this development, Sanjay Kumar of the CSDS promptly repudiated his analysis, and deleted and apologised for his tweets regarding the Maharashtra polls. In a post on X, Kumar claimed, “Error occurred while comparing data of 2024 AS. The data in row was misread by the Data team. The tweet has since been removed. I had no intention of dispersing
any form of misinformation.” Computer savvy readers quickly retrieved the impugned tweet.
BJP spokesperson Amit Malviya observed, “The CSDS is not just another think tank. With its foreign funding, selective caste lens, and unscientific methods, it is an instrument of narrative warfare. Its output is not scholarship – it is strategy. And India must recognise the danger.”
Considerable damage has however been done. Agile social media activists have flooded the arena with claims of fake voters and compromised democratic institutions. The narrative has been set for strategic effect and complete political fiction has been peddled assiduously.
The plot has to be seen holistically, in light of past events starting from the Arab Spring and right up to Bangladesh, that is, wherever the Western world wanted a regime change. Hence, young minds are being conditioned to believe that the elected government at the Centre is illegitimate. Obviously the purveyors of the narrative will try to manipulate the youth to agitate against and perhaps overthrow the government. The danger to Bharatiya democracy is real.
The purveyors of the narrative will try to manipulate the youth to agitate against and perhaps overthrow the government. The danger to Bharatiya democracy is real
Unfortunately, the most reckless allegations are being hurled at the Government precisely at a time when Gen Asim Munir is using dangerous rhetoric across the border. This creates apprehensions that vested interests may instigate communal unrest on the pretext of protecting minority rights. It is well-known that illegal migrants such as Rohingyas (Myanmar) and Bangladeshis have distinct dialects and accents that are easy to identify. Fellow citizens must allow scrutiny of their hamlets and documents without hindrance. Legitimate voters are not being targeted on grounds of faith, and no credible data has been produced to substantiate such insinuations.
Still, the narratives are being built for political impact, especially abroad. In coming months, Bharat could witness staged demonstrations as witnessed in Nepal (that ended the monarchy), Sri Lanka (that made the elected President flee), Bangladesh (that ended democracy), and Ukraine (the Maidan coup continues to haunt the country). This is the most challenging moment for Bharatiya democracy.
