Key Points

"The BJP's desperation is almost tragic," Pawan Khera, Chairman, Media and Publicity department of AICC, said, adding, "They spent half the day twisting a data correction into propaganda, and the other half forging documents to smear our leadership."

He posted his reaction on his X handle. The forgery allegation refers to a letter purportedly signed by K.C. Venugopal, which surfaced on social media and was quickly denounced by Congress as fake.

Venugopal, who has been vocal in criticising the Election Commission's handling of voter roll revisions and CCTV deletions, did not issue such a letter, according to Khera.

The Congress has demanded an investigation into the origin of the forged document and accused BJP-linked accounts of circulating it to sow confusion and discredit the opposition's campaign.

Venugopal had earlier slammed the Election Commission for what he called a "shameless dereliction of duty," citing the deletion of 65 lakh voter names in Bihar and the refusal to share machine-readable rolls.

His remarks came in support of Rahul Gandhi's ongoing "Voter Adhikar Yatra," which seeks to expose alleged collusion between the BJP and the Election Commission in manipulating electoral outcomes.

The controversy erupted after Lokniti-CSDS co-director Sanjay Kumar publicly apologised for posting erroneous voter data from Maharashtra, which had been cited by several Congress leaders to support claims of large-scale voter manipulation.

The data, which showed dramatic fluctuations in voter numbers between the 2024 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, was later withdrawn by Kumar, who admitted to a misreading by his team.

While the BJP seized on Kumar's retraction to discredit Rahul Gandhi's broader allegations of electoral fraud, Congress leaders accused the ruling party of weaponising a technical error to deflect attention from deeper concerns about voter roll integrity.

The BJP has doubled down on its counteroffensive. Party spokespersons, including Amit Malviya and Gaurav Bhatia, accused the Congress of spreading misinformation and demanded an apology from Rahul Gandhi.

"The very institution whose data Rahul Gandhi leaned on has now admitted its figures were wrong," Malviya said, calling the Congress campaign "regressive and shameful."

Despite the retraction of the CSDS data, Congress maintains that its allegations are based on multiple sources, including internal audits and field reports from booth-level agents.

As the war of words escalates, the Election Commission has remained largely silent, except for a press note dismissing the allegations as "baseless."

With both sides digging in, the "Vote Chori" debate is rapidly becoming a flashpoint in India's post-election political landscape.

- IANS