Bengaluru: Dipankar Sarkar, a 34-year-old food delivery executive, had taken the day off on Friday as his wife was unwell, helping with the cooking and taking care of their five-year-old son.
The Sarkars live in house number 35 in a nondescript locality in Bengaluru’s Mahadevapura, within earshot of the bustling technology corridor in India’s IT capital.
Unknown to him, his modest home (Number 35), barely 10 feet wide, comprising a kitchen, bathroom and a multipurpose hall-like space that doubled up as the bedroom and water storage area, was making news across the country.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had levelled allegations of voter list manipulations in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and said that this particular home had 80 voters registered to it.
“I just heard that there are 80 voters registered to this address. I moved into this home about a month ago and we are just three people in all,” the 34-year-old told ThePrint.
While the Election Commission has been dismissive of Rahul Gandhi’s allegations, they are sending teams to verify his charges.
On Friday morning, officials from the district election office showed up at the Sarkars’ residence, enquiring about the other 78 people who were registered to this address.
“This particular home has 80 registered voters, but it is not true that that many people live there at present. Nor can we say for sure that 80 votes have been polled from that very home,” Munirathnamma, the Booth Level Officer (BLO), told ThePrint.
This discovery appears to provide the Congress, and possibly the Opposition, with tangible evidence of voter list manipulation, particularly after previous failed attempts to corner the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP government on EVM fraud.
The allegations of voter list manipulation come even as the Opposition is building pressure on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar.
Addressing a press conference Thursday and spearheading a protest on Friday, Gandhi had alleged widespread voter list manipulation, fake addresses and voters among other irregularities in the Mahadevapura assembly segment, where the BJP had a lead of 1,14,046 votes in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. According to the Congress’ scrutiny of data, as many as 1,00,250 entries in the voter list of Mahadevapura segment were manipulated, helping the BJP win the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat despite trailing in other segments.
Gandhi has alleged that the BJP and the Election Commission colluded to ‘steal’ votes. “There are 6.5 lakh votes in Mahadevapura Assembly segment, out of which 1,00,250 votes were stolen. This implies that 1 out of every 6 votes was stolen,” he said in Bengaluru Friday.
‘All 35 homes of mine don’t have 80 people’
The election official told ThePrint that several of these people who were registered in house number 35 of Muni Reddy Gardens were mostly tenants who keep moving house. “It is a rental home near the IT companies… some of these people give this address to the banks and the making of other ID cards and do not change it when they move house,” she said.
The BLO added that when election officials visit homes before elections, the names of those not present are not immediately deleted and instead sent to the ECI. She says that they mark them as ‘shifted’ but the names are not deleted and these people have the right to vote.
“We found 17 people who supposedly live at that address. Most of them live nearby and have just not changed their address in documents,” she said.
“I have 35 homes and even if there are two per home, it is 70 people. How can I keep 80 people in one house? There are just three legal voters remaining in this locality since most others who were registered here vacated their homes around the Covid-19 induced lockdown,” Jayaram Reddy, the 67-year-old landlord said.
He did not recognise even one of the names registered to House number 35.
“I have been watching Rahul Gandhi making claims that there are 30,40,70 people living here… show me 80 people here,” he said.
‘Modi stole votes to become PM’
Rahul Gandhi had made a dramatic presentation Thursday, stating that the Congress had to manually scan 7 feet of paper for just one assembly constituency.
He said that the ECI refused to give electronic data and its papers are not machine readable, making the discovery that much harder.
He alleged that there were 40,009 fake & invalid addresses 10,452 bulk votes, 11,965 duplicate voters, 4,132 invalid photos and 33,692 instances of Form 6 misuse (Form 6 is for inclusion of voters in electoral rolls).
“EC and BJP have stolen more than 1 lakh votes through these 5 ways in one assembly seat of Bangalore Central LS seat. The Election Commission demands an affidavit from me. It says that I’ll have to take an oath. I have taken the oath of the Constitution in Parliament,” Gandhi said at the party’s ‘Vote Adhikaar Rally’ in Bengaluru’s Freedom Park.
He also questioned why the ECI had shut down its websites in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Bihar and other places after allegations were levelled.
“We demand that EC provide us with the electronic voter list of the entire country, and election-related videography records. If they provide us this data, we’ll prove that seats have not only been stolen in Karnataka, but the whole country. If EC gives us electronic data, we will prove that Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister by stealing votes,” he said.
The LoP added that Modi was PM because of a margin of just 25 seats and it was not a coincidence that the BJP had won 25 seats with a margin of 35,000 votes.
Amit Malviya, the BJP’s head of IT cell, dismissed the LoPs claims. “Those so-called 80 voters at one address? They are rented ‘chawl’ residents, house helps, and security guards who had voter IDs made before moving for work. They don’t live together. They aren’t fraud voters. They aren’t all voting BJP,” he said.
“Rahul Gandhi is now targeting poor migrant workers—people who work hard, earn honestly, and aspire to be stakeholders in India’s progress. Shameful politics at the expense of the most vulnerable,” he added.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also read: Can ECI demand oath from Rahul Gandhi on ‘vote chori’ allegations? Here’s what the law says
