At the Bharat Summit 2026, Rahul Gandhi challenged the integrity of Indian electoral rolls, alleging massive voter discrepancies and questioning the legitimacy of recent election outcomes amid an ongoing political feud with the ECI.
Rahul Gandhi Questions Voter Roll Integrity at Bharat Summit 2026
Hyderabad (Telangana) [India], November 14 (ANI): Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Saturday questioned the integrity of electoral rolls, alleging large-scale voter deletions and unexplained additions between the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and subsequent state Assembly polls in Hyderabad at Bharat Summit.
Referring to nationwide voter roll deletions carried out during revision exercises, Gandhi questioned the legitimacy of past electoral outcomes if millions of registered participants were subsequently classified as non-existent. "140 million people who voted in the 2024 Lok Sabha election were declared as either non-existent voters or non-voters a few months ago," Gandhi stated. "If the Election Commission has declared 140 million voters illegal non-voters, then how is that election possibly legitimate?"
To illustrate his concerns, the Congress leader pointed to the stark contrast between the 2024 Lok Sabha results and the state Assembly elections held in Maharashtra later that year, where the opposition alliance saw its parliamentary gains reversed. "We have an example in Maharashtra where we have a national election; our alliance fights, wins the national election. Three months later, we are decimated," Gandhi said.
Gandhi’s remarks come amid an ongoing political confrontation between the opposition and the Election Commission of India (ECI) regarding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and alleged discrepancies in voter turnout data. While Gandhi and the Congress party have repeatedly demanded machine-readable digital voter lists and accused the poll body of failing to address irregularities, both the Election Commission and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have strongly rejected the allegations.
Gandhi was speaking at the concluding day of the two-day Bharat Summit 2026 at the HICC Novotel venue in Hyderabad, alongside Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy and delegates from around 70 countries. MP Rahul Gandhi alleged that India's traditional electoral and coalition landscape was upturned in 2014 through massive inflows of money, claiming that "democracy was destroyed in India in 2014."
Earlier, Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Saturday attended and addressed the valedictory session of the Bharat Summit 2026 in Hyderabad alongside Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, stating that "fascists jump out of the woodwork when systems collapse."
