Had anyone other than Rahul Gandhi broken the news of “vote theft”, there would have been less stir. Media attention would likely have been muted, a few opposition politicians might have debated it briefly and the issue would then have faded away like the many controversies in the past. But with Rahul presenting an elaborate, data-backed explanation, the accusations against the ruling BJP and its alleged misuse of the Election Commission (EC) have grown louder and harder to ignore.
For the first time in years, the entire opposition spectrum spoke in one voice in support of the leader of the opposition. Some, such as Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party and Sharad Pawar of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP-SP), even cited instances of “vote theft” in their own regions, strengthening Rahul’s claims. The opposition, long demoralised by a string of defeats, now sensed it had enough cards to politically counter the BJP’s momentum.
What made the development striking was Rahul’s personal involvement. He had taken a direct interest in electoral data, leading to his explosive press conference on August 7. “I will study the data charts myself,” he told Praveen Chakravarty, chairman of the Congress Professionals’ Wing and head of the data analytics department, after the party’s crushing defeat in the Maharashtra assembly election. Rahul had become convinced that recent elections were unfair. For the first time, he sought to examine Excel sheets and voter rolls himself.
Party insiders recall the widespread confusion after the Maharashtra polls. One question repeatedly surfaced: if the Lok Sabha elections had made the opposition alliance Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) victorious in 30 of the state’s 48 constituencies, giving it a lead in more than 150 assembly segments of 288, how was it possible for the coalition to win barely 50 assembly seats a few months later? “The percentage of people who voted for us in the Lok Sabha polls was almost the same in the assembly elections. Notably, more than 40 lakh voters were added in the assembly elections and almost all seemed to have gone to the BJP-led Mahayuti,” said Chakravarty. To many within the party, the numbers defied logic.
Congress spokesperson Alok Sharma went further, alleging that the BJP had manipulated elections strategically, sometimes allowing the opposition to win in certain states, such as Jharkhand, so that suspicions of malpractice did not grow too strong. “They have undemocratically won Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Maharashtra,” Sharma said, “and also committed fraud in the Lok Sabha elections.”
After his assessment of the Maharashtra polls, Rahul presented the irregularities to the Congress Working Committee at its Belagavi session in Karnataka last December. There it was decided to establish a dedicated committee to probe electoral discrepancies, conduct data-digging and compile reports. This led to the formation of the Empowered Action Group of Leaders and Experts (EAGLE). “When the committee’s report came out, we were not expecting such startling data,” said Pawan Khera, chairman of the Congress’s media and publicity department and a member of both the CWC and EAGLE. Outside Parliament, Rahul described the data as an “atom bomb” just a week before his August press conference, raising serious questions about the EC and its alleged collusion with the BJP. “Electoral malpractices are evident from the EC’s own website. The Commission cannot refute its own data,” said Sunil Kumar, spokesperson for the Delhi Congress.
Rahul’s accusations spread like wildfire across the internet, sparking memes on social media and overpowering the BJP’s attempts to contain the narrative. For many Congress leaders, the “vote theft” slogan offered something they had long lacked: a unifying moral edge. “It has given the opposition a moral advantage,” said B.K. Hariprasad, Congress in-charge of Haryana. “Now it is up to the workers to stay strong.”
The effect was immediate. Leaders of other opposition parties, even those previously estranged from the Congress, aligned with the narrative. The Trinamool Congress, which had clashed with the Congress during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, joined the chorus both inside and outside Parliament. Aam Aadmi Party leaders, despite breaking ties with the INDIA bloc, too, backed Rahul’s claims. The slogan of “vote theft” proved to have strong mobilising power, pulling together disparate parties under the opposition umbrella.
Congress insiders said the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists had already rattled opposition parties, but it was the “vote theft” issue that created a shared sense of urgency. Even Mamata Banerjee, known for her fiercely independent politics, appeared responsive. According to one insider, the “motivated implementation” of SIR prompted her to send her nephew Abhishek Banerjee to a dinner hosted by Rahul.
Initially, many senior Congress leaders had been reluctant to believe that the EC itself could be complicit. “Now even opposition bloc leaders have realised the deliberate manipulation being committed,” said a top leader close to Rahul. The shift in perception has energised opposition cadres across the country.
In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress released a list of 27 assembly constituencies where disproportionate voter additions exceeded the margin of defeat, costing the party the 2023 assembly elections. Satna MLA Siddharth Sukhlal Kushwaha alleged that in several areas Congress voters were deliberately listed in other booths. Around 5–10 per cent of voters, he claimed, faced such impediments, leading many to return home without casting their vote. “On polling day, when crowds thin, especially among the elderly or less-aware voters, officials themselves cast votes,” Kushwaha alleged. “That is why the EC refuses to release CCTV footage.”
In Maharashtra, state unit general secretary Avaneesh Singh pointed out that the voter turnout jumped suspiciously from 58 to 64 per cent after 6pm. “There is no concrete reply from the EC, which has diminished trust in the apex election body,” he said. A former minister explained how easy it could be to implement such manipulation: “The government does not need to instruct every official. It just needs to tell the district magistrates and senior superintendents of police, and nobody else would know.”
In Uttar Pradesh, the “vote theft” narrative reignited memories of the Samajwadi Party’s narrow loss in the 2022 assembly elections, when it was defeated in 89 constituencies by margins ranging from 150 to 8,000 votes. “Akhilesh Yadav minutely assessed booth-level performance after the defeat and found that voter deletions were carried out by the EC,” said Samajwadi Party national spokesperson Ameeque Jamei. The party, he added, had submitted around 18,000 affidavits after the elections without receiving any response from the EC. “Rahul Gandhi has now set the stage at the national level,” he said. “It is no longer an individual fight, it is the fight of the entire opposition.”
The Rashtriya Janata Dal has also seized the issue, building a campaign along with the Congress around electoral malpractice as the reason for past defeats. According to analysts, voter enthusiasm in Bihar appears greater than in 2020. “It has entered the public consciousness,” said Shakeel Ahmad Khan, Congress legislature party leader, currently campaigning with Rahul. “The questions we are asking are fact-based, and ordinary people have started asking the same.”
Some experts, however, urge caution. Manindra Nath Thakur, professor of political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said negative narratives in Indian politics tended to have limited shelf life. “It has certainly ignited momentum, but the opposition should not rely on it exclusively,” he said. Nonetheless, the BJP has struggled to regain the narrative since Rahul’s press conference. “The BJP appeared to have made several counter-moves, but they were unsuccessful,” said political analyst Aditya Rathi. “It is important for the BJP to regain the edge in the narrative war, especially with the Bihar elections approaching.” The opposition campaign’s first phase, he argued, has been triumphant, consolidating the vote bank in Bihar.
The BJP has not remained a silent spectator. The government attempted a series of measures to blunt the impact of the “vote theft” slogan. Two months after Operation Sindoor, the Indian Air Force announced that it had downed six Pakistani aircraft, though the news failed to generate the intended effect. Soon after, officers from the Army, Navy and the Air Force appeared on popular television show Kaun Banega Crorepati, but again the resonance among the public was weak.
In another move, the government introduced the 130th Constitutional Amendment Bill, aimed at automatically removing the prime minister, chief ministers or ministers who remain in custody for 30 consecutive days on serious charges, without waiting for a conviction. Opposition parties described the bill as a panic measure. “We believe it was brought in emergency,” said Buxar MP Sudhakar Singh of the RJD, “as nobody had any knowledge of it before its introduction.”
The EC itself has come under growing scrutiny. Withholding polling-booth videos and altering website content into unreadable formats have deepened suspicions. Rahul has demanded the release of voter rolls and CCTV footage to substantiate his claims, but the EC has refused. Instead, it asked Rahul to file an affidavit regarding his allegations, even though no such requirement was imposed on senior BJP leader and MP Anurag Thakur, who had voiced similar concerns.
Opposition leaders claim these inconsistencies are not accidental. They allege that the revision of voter lists is designed to suppress opposition votes. “Statistically, the number of voters who trust the electoral system has gone down,” said DMK leader Kalanidhi Veeraswami, the MP from Chennai North. “The chief election commissioner speaks like a BJP member. We are taking this up in Tamil Nadu and warning of its dangers. It has given fresh life to the opposition.”
With key assembly elections coming up, the opposition is preparing to stretch the “vote theft” narrative well beyond Bihar. In Kerala, the BJP is still the third force, while in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, the Trinamool and the DMK are seen to hold a clear advantage. But in Assam, where the Congress faces a direct contest with the BJP, worries are mounting. “If they remove votes through SIR, we cannot win,” said Congress MLA Debabrata Saikia. “Our people’s names will vanish from the rolls. There may even be communal profiling. How will the people vote for us then?”
The slogan “vote theft” has given the opposition something very few expected: renewed energy for the Congress, unity across the opposition and a narrative that has penetrated public consciousness. Whether it reshapes Indian politics depends on how deeply common people begin to question the sanctity of elections and, by extension, the legitimacy of the Narendra Modi government. If that ripple effect takes hold, the consequences could be profound.