UP Cong attacks BJP, ECI over vote theft

Uttar Pradesh Congress Legislature Party leader Aradhana Mishra ‘Mona’ on Saturday launched a sharp attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission of India (ECI), alleging a “systematic theft of votes” across the country.

Addressing a press conference at the UP Congress headquarters, Mishra said the Congress’ “Vot Chor Gaddi Chhod” (Leave the Chair, Vote Thieves) campaign—initiated after Rahul Gandhi’s August 7 press conference—had been successfully completed across all districts of Uttar Pradesh.

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She informed that 1,795,370 citizens in the state had signed petitions against alleged voter fraud, which are now being sent to Delhi.

“This campaign is about protecting democracy. Across India, names of genuine voters are being deleted, especially those who are not BJP supporters. It’s a deliberate and organized conspiracy,” Mishra said.

Mishra announced that a mass rally will be held at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan in the last week of November, where the Congress will hand over five crore signatures collected from across the country to the President of India.

Citing examples from Bihar and Haryana, she accused the Election Commission of bias and negligence. “In Bihar, despite completing all formalities, lakhs of names have been deleted from the voter list. In Haryana, 25 lakh votes—one in every eight—were tampered with during the recent assembly elections,” she alleged.

Providing specific figures, Mishra claimed:

5,21,619 duplicate voters were found in Haryana, 93,714 invalid addresses were recorded, 19,26,351 multiple entries were linked to single addresses, with some addresses showing up to 500 voters and 1,124,177 fake-photo entries were detected.

She also alleged that 3.5 lakh voters who had voted in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were removed from rolls before the recent state polls.
Mishra further criticized the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, calling it “a new weapon for vote theft.”

“The Representation of the People Act, 1960, makes it the ECI’s duty to ensure all eligible citizens are on the rolls. But for the first time, the responsibility has been shifted to the voters themselves,” she said.

Citing the 1995 Supreme Court ruling in Lal Babu Hussain vs Electoral Registration Officer, Mishra argued that determining citizenship is not within the ECI’s jurisdiction. “Now, the ECI is demanding documents even the Supreme Court had said are unnecessary. Had the Court not intervened, crores of poor citizens in Bihar would have lost their right to vote,” she warned.

Concluding the event, Mishra, along with senior Congress leaders PL Punia, MPs Kishori Lal Sharma, and Ujjwal Raman Singh, flagged off a truck carrying the signed petition forms to Delhi. Party workers chanted slogans of “Vot Chor Gaddi Chhod” as the convoy departed.