Bhubaneshwar (Odisha) [India], August 9 : Odisha Pradesh Congress President Bhakta Charan Das on Saturday backed Congress MP Rahul Gandhi's allegations of "vote theft" against the Election Commission and alleged that the BJP wants to stay in power by "any means."
Speaking to ANI, the Odisha Pradesh Congress President reiterated that their party could not form their government due to "vote theft" and "attempts" are being made to steal votes in the Bihar elections too.
Bhakta Charan Das said, "Our leader Rahul Gandhi presents his points with facts before the nation. Due to vote theft in Maharashtra, our government could not be formed, and the BJP came to power. The same happened in Madhya Pradesh and Haryana. In Bihar, too, attempts are being made to steal votes in the elections, and 65 lakh voters have been removed from the voter list."
"The Congress Party and Rahul Gandhi are demanding digital data (from the Election Commission), but they are not providing the digital data and are saying that no vote theft occurred. They (BJP) want to stay in power by any means... That's why they are stealing votes," he added.
Earlier today, the Bharatiya Janata Party asked the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, to give a formal complaint regarding his "vote theft" allegation against the Election Commission of India(EC). The party's National Spokesperson, Gaurav Bhatia, also alleged that the Congress has a habit of blaming someone for their electoral setbacks.
On Friday, the Centre and opposition sparred over Rahul Gandhi's allegations of "vote theft" with BJP leaders and allies dismissing his claims as "baseless."
However, the opposition members backed his charges and demanded a parliamentary discussion.
This came in response to a press conference held by Rahul Gandhi on August 7, where he claimed that the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were "choreographed" by the EC to benefit the BJP, which he said appeared "immune to anti-incumbency."
Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat said neither Rahul Gandhi's party nor his party workers believed his claims, adding that if common entries in voter lists existed, a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was necessary.
Meanwhile, labelling Rahul Gandhi's claims as 'baseless", the EC on Friday said that the Leader of Opposition (LoP) in Lok Sabha is trying to "sensationalise" the issue instead of availing the legal processes.
The poll body in a statement said that Rahul Gandhi repeated a "tired" script."
At his recent press conference, Rahul Gandhi repeated a tired script. In 2018, it was then Kamal Nath, the then President of MPCC; today, it's the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha playing the same tune. In 2018, they tried to mislead the Supreme Court by producing documents from a private website to demonstrate that there are mistakes in the electoral rolls in as much as the same face was shown again for as many as 36 voters. Wherein, in reality, the defects were rectified around 4 months ago and the copy of the same was supplied to the party. This was made ground to seek the searchable pdf format for electoral rolls. The Court refused to accept the prayer of Kamal Nath," ECI said.