Will Rahul Gandhi drop ‘hydrogen bomb’ today? Congress MP to hold crucial press meet in Delhi

Congress MP Rahul Gandhi will hold a crucial press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday, with speculations rife that he is likely to make another round of revelations about alleged irregularities in electoral rolls.

Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, had earlier claimed that he would drop a “hydrogen bomb” linked to his charges of "vote theft".

The press meet is scheduled for 12 pm at the AICC headquarters.

In the last round of allegations he made in September, the former Congress chief said that a centralised software had been used for “mass deletion” of names from the voters’ list in several states.

He also accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of protecting "vote chors" and those “who have destroyed democracy”.

Gandhi cited the example of the Aland constituency in Karnataka, where he alleged that 6,018 applications were filed impersonating voters, for deletion of names from the list.

“The people who filed these applications actually never filed them,” he alleged, adding that the filing was done automatically using software and phone numbers.

Gandhi cited another instance in Maharashtra's Rajura constituency, where he said, voters were added in a fraudulent manner using automated software.

"Same system is doing this. It is doing it in Karnataka, Maharashtra, it has done it in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and we have proof of it," he had said.

The Election Commission has dubbed the allegations "incorrect and baseless".

"No deletion of any vote can be done online by any member of the public, as misconceived by Gandhi,” it said, asserting that no deletion can take place without hearing the affected person.

Gandhi’s allegations had triggered a political storm, with several BJP leaders accusing him of trying to stoke chaos and create in India the kind of unrest seen in Nepal and Bangladesh.

In an earlier press conference, held in Bengaluru, Gandhi had claimed that in Mahadevapura assembly constituency in Karnataka, over one lakh votes were "stolen through manipulation", and asserted that "vote chori" is like an "atom bomb on our democracy".