NEW DELHI: As soon as Congress leader Rahul Gandhi dropped the ‘H-bomb’ on Wednesday, alleging big vote theft in Haryana, the Election Commission countered him. The poll body asked Gandhi why booth-level agents, who are appointed by political parties to oversee voting and flag irregularities, raised no objections during the revision to avoid multiple names. According to news agency PTI, an Election Commission source said that the allegations by Rahul Gandhi were unfounded, and no appeals were filed against the electoral rolls in Haryana. “Why were no claims and objections raised by INC’s BLAs during revision to avoid multiple names?” the source said.

In a much-awaited press conference held at Congress headquarters in New Delhi, the leader of opposition in Lok Sabha, claimed poll irregularities in Haryana elections and alleged BJP of planning to convert Congress’s victory. During the presser, Gandhi questioned the election commission and democratic process in country, saying that the future of Gen Z is being “destroyed.” The Congress leader claimed theft of 25 lakh votes in Haryana, saying it includes 5.21 lakh duplicate voters, 93,174 invalid voters and 19.26 lakh bulk voters. He added thay one in eight voters on Haryana electoral list is fake. He also claimed that one person had 223 votes in two booths with same photo in Haryana and targeted EC, saying this is why the poll body destroys CCTV footage.“All (exit) polls pointed to a Congress victory (in Haryana). The other things that was surprising to us that for the first time in Haryana’s electoral history ever, postal votes were different than the actual voting. This had never happened in Haryana before. So, we thought that let’s go into details. When I first saw this information that you are going to see, I struggled to believe it. I was in shock. I told the team to cross-check multiple times,” Rahul Gandi said in the press conference. He further played a video of Haryana chief minister Nayab Singh Saini, where he can be heard saying having a “vyavastha” while accusing BJP of having plans to “convert Congress’s landslide victory into a loss.” “I want the young people, GenZ of India to understand this clearly because this is about your future. I am questioning the EC, democractic process in India so I am doing it with 100% proof. We are pretty sure that a plan was put in motion to convert Congress’ landslide victory into a loss. Please the notice the smile on his (CM Nayab Saini) face and notice the ‘vyavastha’ that he is talking about. This is 2 days after election when everybody is saying that the Congress is sweeping the elections,” Rahul Gandhi said. During the presser, Gandhi also displayed a photo of a voter list, in which a picture of a lady occurred several times with different names and other key details. Rahul asked, “Who is this lady? What is her name? Where does she come from?” He added, “She votes 22 times in Haryana, at 10 different booths, and has multiple names: Seema, Sweety, Saraswati, Rashmi, Vilma.” Rahul claimed that the woman is not an Indian, but a “Brazilian model.” “That’s a stock photograph and she is one of 25 lakh such records in Haryana,” he added.