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The Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), on Sunday, 10 August, issued a notice to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, asking him to provide proof for his allegation that a woman in Bengaluru’s Mahadevapura Assembly segment voted twice in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
During a press conference on Thursday, 7 August, Rahul claimed that one voter, identified as Shakun Rani, had cast her ballot twice, citing it as evidence of large-scale voter list manipulation.
However, the CEO said an inquiry found that Shakun Rani denied voting more than once and that the “tick-marked” document shown by Rahul was not an official record from a polling officer.
Rahul has alleged that over one lakh “fake votes” were created in Mahadevapura, including 11,965 duplicate entries, 40,009 voters with fake or invalid addresses, 10,454 bulk voters registered under a single address, 4,132 voters with invalid photographs, and 33,692 cases of alleged misuse of Form 6, which is used for new voter registration.
The CEO has asked Rahul to submit the names of the electors he believes were wrongly included or excluded, along with a signed oath for each case, warning that false declarations are punishable under the Representation of the People Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
This confrontation comes amid the Congress’s broader criticism of the Election Commission, with the party accusing the poll body of enabling voter list irregularities, particularly in urban constituencies where high numbers of migrants and tenants often face duplication or deletion from the rolls.