New Delhi, Aug 13
Even as the Congress is alleging a massive vote theft during the last year Lok Sabha elections and in assembly polls by the Election Commission in collusion with the Bharatiya Janata Dal (BJP), sources on Wednesday indicated that Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi is working on almost 70 Lok Sabha seats spanning in several states where the grand old party lost by less than 50,000 vote margin.
Rahul Gandhi on August 7 addressed a detailed press conference alleging huge level vote theft in Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha’s Mahadevpura assembly seat.
Rahul Gandhi had alleged that in Mahadevapura assembly constituency alone, 1,00,250 votes had been “stolen” through duplicate entries, fake addresses and bulk registrations at single locations.
Congress sources said that on Tuesday Rahul Gandhi had a detailed meeting with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and party general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal, just hours ahead of the meeting with the party’s general secretaries, state incharges and frontal organisation chiefs on the allegef vote theft and special intensive revision of voter rolls.
Top party sources said that Rahul Gandhi during the meeting with the party chief said that on around 70 parliamentary seats the Congress lost with a margin of less than 50,000 votes in Lok Sabha polls last year.
The source said that the Congress is now working on these constituencies to see if these BJP victories are genuine by looking into the voter rolls as the party has done in the case of Bengaluru South Lok Sabha seat.
The source also said that Rahul Gandhi also batted for the machine readable rolls, a demand he has raised few days ago with the poll panel.
The source said that Rahul Gandhi, who is a Lok Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh’s Rae Bareli mentioned that instead of going through the physical copies of voter rolls the digital readable format voter rolls are easiest path to check the genuinity of the rolls.
The source said that Rahul Gandhi was also surprised that why the Election Commission has been refusing the demand of the party to share the digital readable format of the voter rolls.
The source also said that in the coming days the Congress leader will once again address several press conferences to highlight the same and it can be done in multiple sessions.
Even party leader and Chhattisgarh incharge Sachin Pilot during the meeting of the general secretaries, incharges and frontal organisation chiefs mentioned that the Congress should be cautious in this case as every losing candidate should not blame ‘vote chori’ alone to hide own failure.
During the meeting of the party’s general secretaries, incharges and frontal organisation chiefs, the Congress decided to hold the mashal juloos on August 14, while from August 23 to September 14 it will hold ‘vote chor, gaddi chod’ rally and from September 15 to October 15, and the party will launch the signature campaign against the massive scale vote theft.
Rahul Gandhi while addressing the press conference on August 7 had said that there was ‘bhayankar chori’ (massive theft) during the polls and linked it with the SIR exercise in Bihar.
The Election Commission had denied the allegations of the former Congress chief and even Karnataka’s CEO and Haryana CEO had written to Rahul Gandhi demanding him to share the evidence.
Karnataka CEO had also asked Rahul Gandhi to furnish the signed declaration and oath with it. Rahil Gandhi then said that whatever he says to his people in public can be taken as oath.
The Congress leader is all set to kickstart his ‘Matdata Adhikar Yatra’ from August 17 in Bihar’s Sasaram over the alleged vote theft and SIR exercise of the poll panel. The yatra will go on for almost 15 days which will be attended by the Mahagatbandhan partners including RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav and will conclude in Ara district of the state.
