Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday levelled serious allegations against the Election Commission, claiming that more than 25 lakh entries in Haryana’s electoral rolls were “fake” and that last year’s assembly elections were “stolen”. Addressing the media in New Delhi, he accused the Chief Election Commissioner and two commissioners of colluding with the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to engineer the party’s victory. Gandhi said he was questioning the democratic process with “100 per cent proof”, alleging that a coordinated operation—dubbed “Operation Sarkar Chori”—was launched to convert an expected Congress sweep into a loss. Displaying examples of duplicate entries, invalid addresses and bulk voters, he claimed a shocking one in every eight voters in Haryana was fake.

Gandhi presented multiple instances to support his charge, including the case of a woman whose photograph appeared 22 times across 10 booths in Rai constituency—the image, he said, was taken from a Brazilian model’s profile, proving a “centralised operation”. He argued that thousands allegedly linked to the BJP had voted in both Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, and claimed postal ballots had shown a dramatically different trend, with Congress leading in 73 seats compared to BJP’s 17. Gandhi insisted that the Election Commission had failed to remove duplicate entries because doing so would ensure fair elections, which he accused the Commission of resisting. He also criticised CEC Gyanesh Kumar for “lying” about the use of house number zero, calling it part of a broader attempt to mislead the public.

Reiterating concerns raised earlier in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura and Aland constituencies, Gandhi said the scale of discrepancies in Haryana indicated manipulation at both state and national levels. He referenced a video of current Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini suggesting the BJP “had a system in place”, claiming it reinforced suspicions of organised malpractice. The Congress leader said he was “shocked” by the findings and urged young voters to recognise that their democratic future was at stake. While the BJP secured 48 seats in the 90-member Assembly—despite exit polls predicting a Congress victory—the Election Commission has rejected Gandhi’s charges as baseless, maintaining that no voter can be deleted without due process.