‘BJP has turned Election Commission into its poll rigging machinery’: TN CM MK Stalin on ‘Vote Chori’

Launching a blistering attack on the BJP and the Election Commission, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and ruling DMK president MK Stalin on Monday charged the saffron party with turning the poll watchdog, an autonomous statutory body, into its ‘poll rigging machinery’ as evidenced by the exposé by Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

Ahead of the march by INDIA Bloc leaders and their subsequent detention by the police in the national capital, Stalin made it clear that he stands shoulder to shoulder with his ‘brother Rahul Gandhi’ on the issue of seeking justice for vote theft.

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In a hard-hitting post on ‘X’, the Chief Minister alleged that “The BJP has turned the Election Commission into its poll rigging machinery. What happened in #Bengaluru’s #Mahadevapura is not an administrative lapse; it is a calculated conspiracy to steal the people’s mandate. The #Vote Theft evidence presented by my brother and LoP Thiru @RahulGandhi exposes the scale of this fraud.”

With elections due for the Tamil Nadu Assembly early next year and the DMK working on retaining power, Stalin is opposed to any kind of Special Intensive Revision of the electoral roll in Tamil Nadu, which the Election Commission is carrying out in Bihar.

“We demand the immediate release of complete machine-readable voter rolls for every state, an end to politically driven deletions and an independent probe into this subversion of our democracy. #DMK stands shoulder to shoulder in this fight. We will not watch in silence while the BJP robs India’s democracy in broad daylight. #VoteChori #RahulExposesVoteChori,” said the post further.

Meanwhile, Congress veteran and former Union Minister P Chidambaram blasted the poll body for attempting to bully Rahul Gandhi for his exposé of vote fraud. “The EC is not a Court and cannot behave like a Court in entertaining complaints. EC is an administrative body with responsibility for holding free and fair elections. Besides, Rule 20 (3) (b) will apply only to the case of a specific decision made by the ERO accepting or rejecting a ‘claim’ to be included in the electoral rolls. The Rule has no application in the case of alleged massive manipulation in the electoral roll of an entire Assembly constituency,” he wrote on his ‘X’ handle.

Referring to large scale complaints that claims lodged by the Booth Level Agents are not being accepted in Bihar, he said “If this allegation is true, SIR and the refusal to entertain complaints will spell the death of democratic elections. ECI owes a duty to political parties as well to the voters of this country.”