'Unfounded allegations': EC rebuts Rahul Gandhi's Lok Sabha poll rigged claim

New Delhi: The Election Commission on Saturday rejected claims of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi that the 2024 Lok polls were rigged, saying it appears that these "unfounded allegations" are intended to exert undue pressure on the election machinery and even threaten poll officials.

Addressing a Congress event here, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha cited data collected by the Congress from an assembly constituency in Karnataka where the party checked the photographs and names of electors physically and reportedly found out that 1.5 lakh votes were "fake" out of a total of 6.5 lakh voters.

"The election system in India is dead," he said, adding that the Lok Sabha elections were rigged.

In a fact-check post on X, the poll authority said Gandhi's statements are "misleading and baseless." It said during the preparation of the electoral roll for LS-2024, both the Draft and Final Electoral lists were shared with all political parties, including the Congress, and were appealable under provisions of the Representation of the People Act.

"Hardly any appeals were filed across all 36 states and Union territories by the Indian National Congress," it said.

The poll body pointed out that in the 2024 parliamentary polls, only eight election petitions were filed by the losing Congress candidates under Section 80 of the RP Act 1951.

"Shri Rahul Gandhi has repeatedly made unsubstantiated and misleading allegations, including baseless claims such as 'vote chori', and has threatened lakhs and lakhs of hardworking election officials across the country.

"It appears that these unfounded allegations are intended to discredit their impartial and transparent hard work, attempt to exert undue pressure on the election machinery, and even threaten them without even filing an appeal against the electoral roll or even an election petition against the conduct of elections as per law," it said.

The EC said it had extended an invitation to Gandhi for an interaction on June 12, 2025, "there has been no response from him so far."