In this compact analysis about Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s Vote-Chori allegations, political observer Gaurav Tiwari brings up historical facets of electoral manipulations in India and highlights the new dimensions these devious machinations have acquired in recent years, especially under the money-rich BJP.
When Your Vote Gets Cast Before You Arrive
A couple of decades ago, I accompanied my uncle to a polling station in Varanasi. We arrived at 3 PM only to find that his vote was already cast. Uncle, a government employee, asked the presiding officer to explain this anomaly. The officer stood speechless, looking at the booth agents—all personally known to us. One of them clearly hadn’t expected my uncle to turn up.
My uncle asked for the complaint process, sensing he wouldn’t get to file one. This may have been an isolated incident, but it was a glimpse into how elections can be compromised when no one’s watching.
Many people I have met, including senior politicians, seem to understand that Rahul Gandhi’s recent allegations of “Vote Chori” are variations of what my uncle experienced that day.
The Current Allegations
At an August 7 press conference, Rahul Gandhi alleged that electoral rolls had been tampered with to manipulate votes. He shared findings on voter list changes in Bangalore Central before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. After the disappointing performance of the Congress in Maharashtra—winning only 50 seats versus the BJP’s 235 out of 288 – party leaders intensified their investigations into voter list irregularities.
Since then, Gandhi has carried his campaign directly to the people through a Voter Adhikar Yatra in Bihar, timing it strategically in the run-up to the state’s assembly elections due in November – December 2025. While many accept his allegations about inconsistencies in electoral rolls, skeptics question whether these irregularities actually change election outcomes.
The doubt is understandable. But it misses a crucial point about how modern electoral manipulation works.
The Anatomy of Electoral Manipulation
Elections can be rigged in ways that would make my uncle’s Varanasi experience seem almost quaint:
Removing the right voters: Booth Level Officers can deliberately purge voters likely to oppose a particular party. Sure, voters can check their status online, but that assumes they know to look, have internet access, and possess the resources to challenge government employees. That’s a lot of assumptions.
Adding the wrong ones: Officials can register people who live elsewhere. A Lucknow resident also registered in Bangalore, something recent election commission notices have validated. Party workers can’t exactly knock on doors to verify residency, making this nearly impossible to catch.
Blocking access: Officials can identify booths favoring particular parties and create barriers for certain voters, as allegedly happened during the Uttar Pradesh Kundraki bypoll in November 2024.
Manipulating the count: Sometimes votes polled don’t match the votes counted. In one Haryana panchayat election, a Supreme Court-ordered recount revealed the “defeated” candidate had actually won. But most candidates can’t afford prolonged legal battles.
The classic bogus vote: Before electoral reforms, this was called “booth capturing.” Today, it’s subtler. Voters sometimes find ink already applied to their fingers before voting day, or discover someone has voted in their name. Congress leader C P Joshi had his 2012 loss overturned by the Rajasthan High Court due to multiple votes cast by the same person.
Rahul Gandhi’s Specific Claims
Rahul Gandhi has identified five specific ways electoral rolls get compromised:
- Duplicate voters
- Fake and invalid addresses
- Bulk voters registered at single addresses
- Invalid photographs
- Misuse of Form-6 applications
All these methods essentially do one thing: add ineligible voters to enable fraudulent voting.
Skeptics raise fair questions: Do people with duplicate voter cards actually vote twice? Do ineligible voters really travel to cast ballots? Why don’t booth representatives catch such fraud?
These doubts rest on two assumptions: that election officials remain impartial, and that all parties have present, empowered booth workers. If either assumption fails—and increasingly, both do—compromised officials could allow party workers to vote for ineligible voters without meaningful oversight.
The Resource Reality
Here’s where the theoretical becomes practical. There’s a staggering resource disparity between the BJP and other parties. In 2023-24, the BJP received nearly 75% of donations listed in the name of the top six national parties.
The numbers are stark: as of March 31, 2024.BJP had ₹7,113.80 crore in cash and bank balance – 8.5 times more than what the Congress had at ₹857.15 crore. This isn’t just about campaign advertisements. Lack of funds cripples parties’ ability to maintain organisation and deploy booth workers. In the 2023 Uttar Pradesh Municipal elections, Congress couldn’t field candidates in all 100 wards of Varanasi, the home district of its state party chief, Ajay Rai. If they can’t find candidates, expecting polling agents at every booth is nothing short of a fantasy.
Regional parties face even greater challenges. The Samajwadi Party, out of power in Uttar Pradesh for over seven years, has also witnessed its resources steadily drain. Meanwhile, for a party with the BJP’s resources, organising cadres of “floating voters” who can travel between constituencies and even across different states during different election phases becomes logistically manageable.
When Margins Matter
In most systems, a 2-5% error rate might be acceptable. But elections aren’t most systems. In a typical Uttar Pradesh assembly constituency with 400,000 voters, a 2% margin means 8,000 votes. In Lok Sabha constituencies with 2 million voters, that’s 40,000 votes.
Many seats are decided by exactly such margins, sometimes determining who rules for five years.
The Systemic Problem
Going back to that Varanasi polling booth of two decades ago, the presiding officer suggested that my uncle vote using someone else’s name, someone “unlikely to show up.”
Today’s scenario is more sophisticated but fundamentally similar. With bureaucrats increasingly aligned with political leadership and resource inequality among parties growing ever wider, voting day manipulations can be centrally managed operations rather than local improvisations.
Something this fundamental to democracy shouldn’t depend on a party’s ability to police errant officers or match the ruling party’s resources. The system itself must ensure integrity. Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar erred recently in placing this burden on political parties during his press conference.
In a functioning democracy, even an independent candidate with limited resources should have a fair shot at winning. Otherwise, it takes a tsunami of voter resentment to overthrow an incumbent government.
The question isn’t whether every allegation of electoral fraud is true. The question is whether our electoral system is robust enough to function fairly regardless of which party has deeper pockets. Right now, the answer is blatantly clear and rather uncomfortably so for a functional democracy.
