New Delhi: Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, on Thursday accused Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar of protecting those “destroying Indian democracy.”

At a press conference in New Delhi, Gandhi alleged large-scale, centrally coordinated voter deletions in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. “This was not random. It was done using software in a targeted manner, especially in Congress's strongholds. Minorities and Dalits were disproportionately affected,” he said.

Gandhi pointed out that in Karnataka’s Aland constituency alone, 6,018 deletion applications were allegedly filed by impersonators to eliminate Congress voters. He also criticised the Election Commission for withholding information from the Karnataka CID, which has begun probing the matter.

“These are systematic attempts to erase millions of voters. The CEC must stop protecting those engaged in this assault on democracy,” he said.

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Earlier, while concluding his Voter Adhikar Yatra on September 1, Gandhi had promised a “hydrogen bomb” of revelations on what he termed “vote chori,” asserting that it would leave Prime Minister Narendra Modi unable to “show his face to the country.”

Last month, citing data from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, he claimed that over one lakh votes were manipulated in the Mahadevapura assembly segment of Karnataka, describing the alleged fraud as an “atom bomb on democracy.”
(With PTI inputs)

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