Just hours before the first phase of the Bihar Assembly elections, Indian politics was rocked by a dramatic press conference at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters in New Delhi. On November 5, 2025, Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi delivered what he called the “much-awaited hydrogen bomb,” launching a barrage of allegations against the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections. Gandhi claimed that an orchestrated operation—dubbed “Operation Sarkar Chori” (Operation Government Theft)—had stolen the election from the Congress, fundamentally undermining the democratic process.
According to The New Indian Express, Gandhi asserted that over 25 lakh votes were manipulated in Haryana alone. He broke down the alleged fraud: 5.21 lakh duplicate voters, 93,174 invalid voters, and 19.26 lakh bulk voters, all out of a total of two crore registered voters in the state. “We have crystal-clear proof that 25 lakh voters in Haryana are fake—that they either don’t exist, are duplicates, or are designed in a way that allows anybody to vote. One in eight voters in Haryana is fake—that’s 12.5%,” Gandhi declared at the press conference, his tone urgent and unwavering.
The Congress leader’s claims did not stop at numbers. He cited specific and bizarre examples, including a woman who appeared 223 times on the voter list across two booths and a Brazilian model whose photograph allegedly appeared 22 times under different names in ten booths. “This is proof of a centralized operation. The lady is a Brazilian model. What is a Brazilian person doing on the voters’ list in Haryana?” Gandhi asked, his voice tinged with incredulity (Maktoob Media).
Gandhi accused the Chief Election Commissioner and two election commissioners of colluding with the BJP, stating they were “in partnership” with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He alleged that the plan was to convert what should have been a Congress landslide victory into a loss, despite all exit polls pointing to a convincing win for the party. “We have what we call the ‘H Files’, and this is about how an entire state was stolen. We suspected that this wasn’t happening in individual constituencies, but at the state and national levels,” he said, referencing what he claimed was documentary evidence of widespread manipulation (Maktoob Media).
Gandhi’s allegations extended far beyond Haryana. He claimed that voter IDs in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh were deleted using fake logins and phone numbers from outside the states. He asserted that his party had “concrete, 100 per cent proof” of this large-scale voter deletion, which he said primarily targeted opposition-supporting communities during the 2023 Assembly elections. “The EC can delete duplicate voters, as several such entries appear in the same constituency and booths. But the EC won’t do it because it wants to help the BJP. The EC is also destroying CCTV footage from polling booths,” Gandhi alleged, painting a picture of an electoral system compromised from the top down (Maktoob Media).
To further illustrate his point, Gandhi highlighted the peculiar use of “House No. Zero” in voter rolls—a category supposedly reserved for homeless citizens. He claimed that many of these voters were, in fact, living in homes, and that the real purpose of this designation was to make voters untraceable. “We decided to verify the CEC’s claim. We found that one such house, belonging to a man named Narendra, could not be traced. There are hundreds of such examples. The purpose of house number ‘0’ is to make it impossible to locate voters. After voting, they disappear. The CEC was lying openly to the people. This is a deliberate method to complicate verification,” Gandhi said, aiming to expose what he called a deliberate obfuscation of the electoral process (The New Indian Express).
Further complicating the picture, Gandhi alleged that thousands of BJP leaders and workers were registered as voters in both Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. He cited examples such as a BJP leader with 66 voters registered at his address and another with 500 voters listed under his home. “Dalchand, a BJP leader, is voting in both UP and Haryana. BJP sarpanch in Mathura, Prahlad, is doing the same. The number is in the thousands,” Gandhi charged, suggesting a systematic effort to stack the rolls with ineligible voters (Maktoob Media).
Perhaps most strikingly, Gandhi pointed out that for the first time in Haryana’s history, postal votes and actual votes diverged dramatically. “Normally, postal and actual votes are directionally similar. Here, the Congress got 73 seats in postal votes, while the BJP got 17. It has never happened before,” he said, describing the result as a statistical anomaly that demanded scrutiny (The New Indian Express).
Gandhi’s press conference included a video of Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, who, two days before counting, confidently stated that the BJP “has a system in place.” Gandhi drew attention to the CM’s demeanor, saying, “Please notice the smile on his face and the ‘arrangement’ he is talking about. This was two days after the election, when everyone was saying that the Congress was sweeping the polls.”
When asked about the Congress’s ability to train booth agents to monitor “vote theft,” Gandhi responded with a note of resignation. “If the voter list is corrupted and we are given it at the last moment, there’s no point. We can keep training agents, but legally, these fake voters are allowed to vote. If the voter list is tampered with and the EC is colluding, political parties can’t do anything,” he explained, highlighting what he sees as a systemic failure (The New Indian Express).
Gandhi also warned that Bihar could be the next target for such alleged voter manipulation, expressing concern that parties receive voter lists only at the last minute before elections, making it nearly impossible to detect anomalies in time. “People might be asking how could they not see such anomalies earlier,” he said, explaining the logistical hurdles faced by opposition parties (Maktoob Media).
The BJP, for its part, categorically rejected Gandhi’s accusations. The party dismissed them as “false and baseless,” accusing the Congress leader of raising questions on the Election Commission to hide his failures and defame India’s democracy. Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Kiren Rijiju went further, accusing Gandhi of “playing games” in collusion with “anti-India” forces and criticizing his conduct during elections. Rijiju argued that Gandhi goes abroad during campaigns, does not meet people on the ground, and only cries foul after losing, never taking his concerns to the courts or the EC in a formal manner.
Gandhi, however, insisted that the integrity of India’s elections was at stake. He said the Supreme Court was aware of the allegations and that opposition parties would coordinate to oppose flawed electoral roll revisions in other states. “If the voter list is flawed, then the election is flawed. If the voter list is a lie, there is no democracy. Please understand the world you are living in,” he urged, calling for vigilance and reform.
As the first votes are cast in Bihar, the shadow of these allegations looms large, raising difficult questions about the health of India’s democracy and the robustness of its electoral institutions. The coming days will test not only the credibility of the Election Commission but also the resilience of the political system itself.
