The evidence behind India’s ‘vote chori’ debate
Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition (LOP), has alleged systematic ‘vote chori’ (vote theft) across the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the subsequent Assembly elections.
The claims rest on two related but distinct assertions.
The first concerns irregularities in electoral rolls: duplicates, invalid or bulk addresses, mismatched photographs, and Form 6 misuse, said to have altered results in favour of BJP and its allies.
The second, amplified in a press conference on 24 September 2026, concerns institutional processes inside the Election Commission of India (ECI), following an Indian Express investigation that reported formal objections by two Election Commissioners (ECs) to decisions related to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
This article examines both layers against publicly available data, like official election results, independent pre-election and exit poll results, CSDS-Lokniti surveys, constituency patterns, and process documentation, all of which have nothing to do with the ECI, electoral processes, and electoral rolls, which are the basis of the allegations.
This article treats the allegations as testable hypotheses, to check if they stand scientific scrutiny.
Lok Sabha elections, 2024
BJP won 240 seats with approximately 37% of the vote share; the NDA secured around 293 seats with approximately 44% of the vote share.
Congress won 99 seats with about 37% of the vote; the broader INDIA alliance won about 234 seats with about 41.5% of the vote.
Turnout was about 66%.
Virtually every major exit poll, unrelated to ECI processes, projected a substantially stronger NDA performance, typically in the 350–400 range. Axis My India, CVoter, Today’s Chanakya and others overestimated BJP strength. CSDS-Lokniti post-poll vote-share estimates aligned more closely with the final numbers.
The consistent direction of error (polls overestimating the ruling side) runs counter to the expectation that large-scale, successful pro-BJP list inflation would have produced results exceeding, rather than falling short of, independent forecasts.
Haryana Assembly 2024
Exit polls widely projected a Congress victory, mostly in the 50–62 seat range out of 90. The actual result was BJP 48 seats (39.9% vote share) and Congress 37 seats (39.1%). The popular-vote margin was under 1%, less than predicted by the exit poll results.
BJP’s superior geographic distribution under first-past-the-post converted it into a significant majority.
Rahul Gandhi later claimed approximately 2.5 million irregular entries, roughly 12.5% of the electorate. No independent forensic matching of these entries to actual votes cast has been published that demonstrates outcome-determinative impact at the claimed scale.
The vote shares and the direction of exit-poll error are consistent with a close, competitive contest.
Uttar Pradesh Lok Sabha 2024
The INDIA alliance (primarily Samajwadi Party) won 43 seats with approximately 43.5% of the vote; the NDA won 36 seats with approximately 43.7%. The popular vote was a little higher for BJP; seat conversion favoured the opposition’s social coalition.
Exit and opinion polls had projected a large NDA majority (commonly 60–74 seats). The underperformance of the ruling side relative to independent forecasts again runs opposite to the pattern expected under systematic pro-BJP roll manipulation.
Maharashtra
In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the INDIA alliance performed competitively in several regions. In the subsequent Assembly election, the Mahayuti alliance (BJP + Shinde Shiv Sena + Ajit Pawar NCP) won a decisive majority: BJP 132 seats, Shinde Sena 57, Ajit NCP 41, while the Maha Vikas Aghadi was reduced to roughly 46–50 seats.
Most exit polls correctly predicted a Mahayuti victory, though few captured the full scale. Rahul Gandhi alleged that voter additions between the parliamentary and assembly polls favoured BJP. No large-scale independent audit matching those additions to outcome-changing votes has been published. Coalition realignments, welfare schemes and opposition fragmentation remain documented factors in Maharashtra’s electoral volatility.
West Bengal Lok Sabha 2024
Trinamool Congress (TMC) won 29 seats (approximately 46% vote share); BJP won 12 seats (approximately 39% vote share). Most exit polls had projected the reverse: BJP ahead or competitive in the 21–31 seat range. The direction of error again overestimated BJP strength.
Bihar: Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and Assembly Elections 2025
The SIR exercise removed approximately 6.5 million names from draft rolls (attributed by the ECI mainly to deaths, migration and duplicates). Opposition parties alleged targeted disenfranchisement. The ECI described the exercise as a long-overdue intensive revision (approved by the SC and later reiterated by it), and noted subsequent addition of eligible applicants.
In the 2025 Assembly election, NDA won approximately 202 of 243 seats (vote share around 46–47%); the Mahagathbandhan obtained about 35 seats (vote share around 37%). Independent statistical examinations found no meaningful correlation between the scale of SIR deletions in a constituency and the change in NDA advantage. Continuity with the NDA’s 2024 Lok Sabha performance and the absence of a clear deletion-to-outcome statistical link argue against SIR as the decisive mechanism.
Karnataka: Mahadevapura as an illustrative case
One prior presentation by Congress focused on the Mahadevapura Assembly segment of Bangalore Central, where BJP’s parliamentary lead was substantial, and the electorate had grown rapidly due to IT-corridor migration.
The claims of roughly 100,000 irregular entries were advanced as evidence of manipulation. Mahadevapura has been a consistent BJP stronghold since 2008. While the case illustrates the type of roll anomalies cited, it is one segment among many and does not, by itself, establish a national pattern of outcome-altering fraud. Broader multi-state results and the polling record carry greater weight.
The 24 September 2026 press conference: Institutional process
On 24 September 2026, Rahul Gandhi held a press conference based on an Indian Express investigation. The report stated that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally recorded objections on at least 14 occasions over roughly 10 months to decisions related to the SIR, including voter additions and deletions, database handling, and orders the two commissioners said had been issued without their knowledge.
Rahul Gandhi demanded the immediate resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, calling him a ‘traitor’ and urging him to become an ‘approver.’ He named the Prime Minister and Home Minister as central to an alleged conspiracy and framed a causal chain: ‘vote chori’ leads to ‘kanoon chori’ (theft of mandate) and ‘sanstha chori’ (theft of institutions).
He asserted that the 2024 Lok Sabha and various Assembly elections were ‘all rigged.’
ECI has maintained that decisions on the SIR were taken unanimously. No new constituency-level forensic matching of irregular list entries to actual votes cast was released at this event.
Institutional context and trust
CSDS-Lokniti surveys document a decline in public trust in ECI between 2019 and 2024. High trust fell from over 50% to the mid-20s % range in some measures. Roll anomalies: duplicates across states, bulk addresses, and data-entry errors are acknowledged as real and widespread in a polity of nearly one billion electors with high internal migration.
Political parties receive draft and final rolls and deploy booth-level agents.
Formal election petitions remain the statutory remedy; the volume of successful petitions matching the scale of the public allegations has not been commensurate.
Transparency limitations have been noted by independent observers.
Conclusion
The public record shows persistent problems in electoral-roll maintenance and a measurable decline in institutional trust.
Anomalies in lists exist and deserve systematic, independent audit.
The plausible reasons for the problems now compared to the previous elections are the 25-year delay in comprehensive electoral rolls revision, legitimately increasing mobility of workforce (with or without families) across the country, and the migration of illegal foreigners through the boundaries who then acquire Aadhaar and other documents using local administration, registering themselves as voters and panning out across India.
The 24 September 2026 presentation shifts emphasis from specific electoral roll anomalies to internal process and decision-making inside the ECI.
However, the claim of deliberate, large-scale ‘vote chori’ sufficient to reverse the 2024 Lok Sabha verdict and multiple assembly outcomes is not corroborated even marginally by the available independent evidence on outcomes.
Exit and opinion polls showed higher BJP/ NDA strength in the national election, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Close popular-vote contests in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh converted under ordinary first-past-the-post dynamics. Statistical tests of Bihar SIR deletions show no decisive link to the assembly outcome. Single-segment illustrations such as Mahadevapura, while useful for highlighting data-quality issues, do not establish a national pattern of outcome-altering fraud.
Anomalies plus political interpretation do not meet the evidentiary threshold for proven, outcome-determining fraud.
Irregular entries to actual votes cast at the claimed multi-state scale have not been established in the public domain.
The institutional questions raised by the reported internal objections warrant scrutiny on their own terms, through formal records, the ECI’s response and any subsequent inquiry, separately from the empirical record on electoral outcomes.
Continued examination via formal complaints, court processes and fuller data release by the ECI, and a full-fledged press conference, if appropriate, are the recourse available to the opposition. Agitations are only strategic signalling.
Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
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