Follow TNM's WhatsApp channel for news updates and story links.
Nitish Mondal leaned over a few sheets of paper, his eyebrow furrowing as he ran his finger down a list of registered voters. “I have been here for 36 years,” he said, standing in the narrow corridor outside his small room in Munni Reddy Layout, in Bengaluru’s Mahadevapura. “I don’t know a single person on this list,” he says.
On Friday, August 8, TNM visited the Munni Reddy Layout, part of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency, to verify a claim made by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. At a press conference in New Delhi, Rahul alleged that the 2024 Lok Sabha election in Bangalore Central was “stolen” through large-scale voter fraud, and pointed to one striking example: nearly 80 voters allegedly registered to a single, tiny room in this settlement.
The layout, tucked away in Mahadevapura, is a dense cluster of around 35 small rooms. Each room – barely 10 to 15 sq ft – typically houses no more than three people. Rahul’s allegation centred on Room No. 35, where 80 voters were listed.
Today, the space is occupied by Dipankar, a food delivery worker from West Bengal who moved in just a month ago. The room is bare, with little more than a mattress and a few utensils. “I have been staying here for a month only. Since yesterday, this problem started,” he said, referring to the sudden media attention. “I don’t know what is happening. I have no voter registration in Bengaluru, and I don’t know who lived here before. The room was empty when I shifted here,” he says.
In the next room, No. 34, Nitish Mondal, a long-time resident, said the names in the voter list shown to him by TNM meant nothing to him. “Most of the people here are from West Bengal and Assam, and none of us have our votes in Karnataka,” he said.
Down the corridor, Aruna, a woman from Assam, seemed equally puzzled. “I don’t know why media people have been coming here since morning,” she said. On hearing the claim of 80 voters registered in Room 35, she shook her head. “All of us here are from Assam and West Bengal. We don’t vote here.” She, too, failed to recognise any of the names listed against the address.
The property’s owner, Jairam Reddy, who rents out all 35 rooms in the building, dismissed the allegation outright. “Before COVID-19, nobody here had votes registered in Karnataka. People stay for one or two months, sometimes a year, then leave. I’ve never known 80 voters from my building.”
He also failed to recognise any of the names or images shown in the voters list as said to be those residing in his building. Earlier in the day, Jairam had told the media that he is a BJP sympathiser but he later went back on it.
Rahul Gandhi’s claim is part of a broader allegation that the Election Commission of India facilitated large-scale malpractice in Mahadevapura, one of eight Assembly segments in Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituencies, enabling the BJP to secure a decisive lead.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Congress candidate Mansoor Ali Khan lost to BJP’s PC Mohan by 32,707 votes. According to him, the BJP’s margin in Mahadevapura alone was over 1.14 lakh votes.
What makes the Muni Reddy Layout fraud more serious is that in 2022, following a The News Minute investigation revealing that a private agency had been collecting voter data from these constituencies and selling it to politicians, the Election Commission of India ordered a revision of rolls in three seats, including Mahadevapura. The fact that such discrepancies remain on the voters list despite this revision is deeply concerning.
Watch our video report: