Leader of the Opposition In Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has alleged that the 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections were ‘rigged’ to favour the Bharatiya Janata Party and claimed that the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre wants to repeat it in the Bihar polls due later this year.
The Gandhi scion according to PTI made these remarks while addressing Indian National Democratic Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) workers during a protest march to the Election Commission’s office in Patna against the ongoing special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, Gandhi said, “Maharashtra assembly elections were rigged to favour the BJP and the NDA. They want to repeat it in Bihar, which we will not allow.”
He alleged that the special intensive revision was an extension of the ‘Maharashtra model’ of fudging electoral rolls and would ‘steal not just people’s right to vote but their entire future’.
“The Election Commission must protect the Constitution… it is working on instructions from the BJP. These Election Commissioners have been nominated by the BJP. The special intensive revision of the electoral rolls is an attempt to steal an election. We will not allow the EC to steal the (voting) rights of the electorate, especially the youth,” he said.
The leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, who arrived in the state capital in the morning, was accompanied by leaders of alliance partners such as Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, besides D Raja, M A Baby and Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretaries of the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India-Marxist and the Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist respectively.
He alleged that the Election Commission comprised persons ‘nominated by the BJP’ and the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bihar was aimed at ‘serving’ the party in power.
Gandhi had flown down to join the state-wide protests which are a part of the nationwide ‘chakka jam’ called by trade unions against the four new labour codes, to which in Bihar has been added the issue of the electoral roll revision.
