After making baseless claims about the 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections being rigged, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi said that the same thing like Maharashtra may happen in the upcoming Bihar assembly elections as well.
Rahul Gandhi, who continues to be a sore loser election after election, made outlandish fake claims about the entire election process after his party’s alliance, Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), was swept away in the assembly elections in Maharashtra last year. The Congress dynast laid out a 5-step plan to try and hide his own party’s shortcomings and instead make up an imaginary process of ‘election rigging’.
Instead of doing any introspection about why people are not voting for Congress and preferring the alternative, the Congress scion chose to spin a conspiracy theory in his Indian Express column. Notably, all of Rahul Gandhi’s claims have already been busted multiple times by the Election Commission.
How to steal an election?
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 7, 2025
Maharashtra assembly elections in 2024 were a blueprint for rigging democracy.
My article shows how this happened, step by step:
Step 1: Rig the panel for appointing the Election Commission
Step 2: Add fake voters to the roll
Step 3: Inflate voter… pic.twitter.com/ntCwtPVXTu
“All concerned Indians must see the evidence. Judge for themselves. Demand answers. Because the match-fixing of Maharashtra will come to Bihar next, and then anywhere the BJP is losing. Match-fixed elections are a poison for any democracy,” the Congress scion added as he aimed to keep an excuse ready if his party loses the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections.
Since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, just like his party, Gandhi’s excuses for constantly performing poorly in elections have also failed to evolve with time. Instead of introspecting each time his party loses an election, Gandhi and Congress come up with imaginary concepts like ‘moral victory’ to cover up their failures. Their excuses range from alleging tampering of the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) to rigging of the entire election process. Looking at Gandhi’s range of excuses, one may think that Congress party in general, and Rahul Gandhi in particular, suffer from a lack of imagination. They keep repeating the same lies that get busted again and again.
Gandhi portrays the BJP as someone force whose power transcends all institutional as well as constitutional limits, and in the process defames every institution in the country, in this case, the Election Commission of India. As Election Commission said, “Such actions not only show complete disregard for the law but also undermine the integrity of thousands of party-appointed representatives and demoralise the lakhs of election officials who work untiringly and transparently during elections.”
However, even if we take Rahul Gandhi’s assertions at face value, one wonders what is stopping this invincible force from securing electoral victories across all the states and at the centre? How come INDI Alliance, of which Congress is a part, has been able to form governments in several states, including big states like Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Telangana.
Rahul Gandhi’s lies about Maharashtra elections debunked by the ECI
After the 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections, the Election Commission of India (ECI) wrote a detailed letter to the Congress party debunking their lies pointwise. Regarding Congress’s allegation of inflated voter turnout, the apex poll body explained how an increased voter turnout in the final hours of voting is a normal phenomenon. The ECI pointed out how it is impossible to change the actual voter turnout as the statutory Form 17C, which contains the details of voter turnout, is provided to the authorised agents of candidates at the polling booth at the time of closing of poll. The ECI also refuted Congress’s allegation that number of voters were arbitrarily added and removed from the electoral rolls.
The fact that Rahul Gandhi fails to substantiate his allegations and that his lies have been repeatedly debunked by the Election Commission after each election do not make a difference to Gandhi. That is because his motive is not to bring about transparency or accountability but to save his face and shift the blame to an external source after his party’s repeated election defeats. Gandhi and his party have repeated their same old, done-to-death excuses for losing elections so many times that they have become the standard, go-to excuses for any political party that loses an election in the country.
How similar lies were peddled by Kejriwal after Delhi assembly elections
Borrowing from Gandhi’s playbook, former Delhi CM and Aam Aadmi Party national convener, Arvind Kejriwal also raised doubts on the fairness of the 2025 Delhi assembly elections anticipating his defeat. Before the counting of the votes after polling, Kejriwal alleged that the Election Commission refused to make public the Form 17C. His party even launched a website where it uploaded all the data relating to the voter turnout at all the constituencies of Delhi.
However, Kejriwal’s claims were dismissed by the Chief Electoral Officer of Delhi, who said the election rules were complied with in letter and spirit and that the Presiding Officers at all polling booths provided copies of Form 17C to all polling agents at the end of polling.
When Chief Electoral Officer said that Form 17C was given to every polling agent, including those from AAP, Kejriwal went quiet.
Is Gandhi making excuses anticipating his party’s defeat in Bihar elections
Rahul Gandhi, whose political career has seen more launches than ISRO’s satellites, has come a long way from blaming the EVM to now alleging the rigging of the entire election process. Gandhi and the entire opposition’s allegations of tampering in the EVMs fell flat after the top court of the country said that the EVMs are tamper-proof and called out the opposition parties for selectively raising the EVM tampering issue everytime they lost elections and keeping mum when they win.
With the EVM tampering allegation losing its appeal, Gandhi has now shifted to questioning the election process itself. However, this time, he did not wait for the voting to take place before making the allegations. He made a prediction that the upcoming Bihar assembly elections will be rigged. Is he anticipating his party’s defeat in the Bihar elections which will be held towards the end of the year? And what if the BJP does not win the Bihar elections, will he still stand by his words that elections were rigged?
Gandhi’s repeated harping about the BJP rigging elections to win begs the question as to why Gandhi, whose party ruled the country for decades, believes that a political party can only stay in power for a long time by rigging elections?
