In a scathing attack on the Election Commission of India (ECI), Leader of Opposition and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Thursday alleged that democratic processes in India are under serious threat due to systemic manipulation and collusion.

Speaking in Delhi, Gandhi questioned how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has seemingly escaped the natural political trend of anti-incumbency that affects “every single party in every single democracy.”

He remarked, “Anti-incumbency is something that hits every single party in every single democracy. But for some reason, the BJP is the only party in a democratic framework that basically does not suffer this idea of anti-incumbency.”

Citing recent elections as examples, Gandhi stated, “Exit polls, opinion polls saying one thing... you saw in the Haryana election, you saw in the Madhya Pradesh election, and then suddenly the result goes in a completely different direction with massive swings. This also included our own internal polling, which is quite sophisticated. So, polling was showing us something, opinion polls were showing us something, regular polls were showing us something, and suddenly we are finding the result is in the opposite direction.”

Turning his focus to Maharashtra, Gandhi described what he called "suspicious activity" surrounding the electoral process.

“In Maharashtra, the addition of more voters in 5 months than in 5 years raised our suspicions and then a huge jump in voter turnout after 5 pm. In Vidhan Sabha, our alliance was wiped and in Lok Sabha, our alliance sweeps. Very suspicious.”

The Congress leader claimed that a staggering “one crore new voters came into the game” between the Vidhan Sabha and Lok Sabha elections. Despite raising these concerns with the Election Commission, Gandhi alleged that no transparency was offered.

“We went to the Election Commission and wrote this article, and the crux of our argument was that the Maharashtra election was stolen. What is the crux of the problem? Voter list is the property of this country. The Election Commission refuses to give us the voter list.”

Furthering his accusations, Gandhi revealed a shocking move by the ECI regarding surveillance data:

“They said we are going to destroy the CCTV footage. This was surprising to us because there was a question in Maharashtra about a massive voting after 5.30 PM for the numbers to add up. Our people knew that in the polling booths, no such thing happened. There was no massive voting after 5.30 pm.”

He concluded with a serious charge, stating: “These two things made us believe with reasonable certainty that the Election Commission of India was colluding with the BJP to steal elections.”