Daijiworld Media Network- New Delhi
New Delhi, Aug 17: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Saturday strongly countered Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of “vote fraud”, terming the usage of words like “vote chori” (vote theft) as an “insult to the Constitution”.
Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, flanked by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, addressed a press meet in the national capital, asserting that the poll body stands firmly with India’s voters and will not step back from its constitutional responsibility.
“Every party is the same for us. The Election Commission is being wrongly used as a platform to target the voters of India for political motives,” Mr Kumar said.
The statement from the poll panel came on a day when Rahul Gandhi launched his ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ in Bihar, questioning the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in the poll-bound state.
Clarifying on the revision process, the Chief Election Commissioner said the exercise was initiated to address political parties’ demands for corrections. He explained that there is a month-long window available to raise objections to the draft voter list and urged political parties to highlight any discrepancies.
“The doors of the Election Commission are always open for everyone equally. It is unfortunate that either the ground realities are being ignored or party representatives’ voices are not reaching their leadership, resulting in misinformation,” he remarked.
Responding to the demand for a machine-readable voter list, Kumar recalled that the Supreme Court had ruled against it in 2019 citing possible breaches of voter privacy. He questioned, “Should the poll body release CCTV footage of voters when even photographs of voters have been misused without consent in the media?”
Highlighting the transparency of the electoral process, he said: “More than 1 crore officials, 10 lakh booth-level agents, and over 20 lakh polling agents are involved in a Lok Sabha election. Can anyone steal votes in front of so many people and such a robust mechanism? Allegations of double voting were raised, but when asked for proof, nothing was produced.”
Underscoring the Commission’s neutrality, Mr Kumar concluded: “Such baseless allegations neither scare the Election Commission nor India’s voters. We stand firmly with all voters, without any bias.”