Latest accusation by Rahul Gandhi is that names of Congress voters are being deleted, as a targeted campaign, from electoral rolls using some software to fill up online application forms. He further says the ECI is not giving relevant information that can track down people who are using this software. He used a silhouette of Amit Shah in the PPT to hint at a ‘suspect’, making those memes real where Shah is looking at some PC and hacking things from Instagram to EVM.
First, let us look at Form 7. It can be filled in by any voter registered in that constituency, who can request the Election Commission to delete someone else’s name by providing relevant information such as that the person has shifted house, or the death of the person, or by claiming that the person is registered on some other roll already. If someone submits wrong information to get another’s name deleted, he or she is liable to be prosecuted.
Rahul Gandhi paraded a man who said that he never applied to delete someone else’s name from the electoral list, but somehow the data shows that he had made such an application. Not just that, the mobile number used in that application did not belong to the person who submitted the application.
This indeed is a flaw in the system, if not fraud, and needs investigation. Rahul Gandhi claimed as if this anomaly was exposed by the Congress party, which filed an FIR and is currently seeking more details using CID under their state government of Karnataka. However, the Election Commission has made it clear that the FIR was actually filed by an authority of the ECI itself, that is, the EC itself is investigating the issue rather than trying to hide it, which is how Rahul Gandhi tried to portray it.
So let us assume some ‘hacker’ indeed is using some software and dummy mobile numbers to apply for deletion of some voters. The fact is that such a hacker can at best create and submit multiple such applications (Form 7) successfully, but that does not mean that names get deleted ‘successfully’.
A successful application only triggers a process where Election Commission authorities have to check in person if the information given on Form 7 is genuine, and if such a person’s name should indeed be deleted from the electoral rolls.
In short, it is a manual system at the end of the day. It is not like you submit an OTP after using a fake phone number and, poof, the other person’s name is gone from the electoral list.
Rahul Gandhi gave no proof of why someone’s name was wrongly deleted from the list. The ECI actually says that no names were deleted as a result of suspicious but successful submission of Form 7. But there can be a case where, even if triggered by any software while impersonating someone (which is a crime and should be punished), maybe the information submitted was genuine and the person’s case qualified for deletion.
Maybe the BJP IT Cell (bigger and stronger than the CIA and Mossad combined) is just more alert and makes sure that if a Congress voter has shifted house, they try to get his or her name deleted. Panna Pramukh type folks have such responsibility, basically. I had explained that earlier in this video:
But in all probability, there is no BJP IT Cell or Panna Pramukh involved in this particular instance he cited. Because the constituency where these names of Congress voters were supposed to have been deleted (Aland in Karnataka) was won by Congress in the subsequent assembly election. Not just that, in the previous election, the BJP had won that seat. Absolutely pathetic job by the BJP IT Cell to end up deleting their own supporters’ names from the voter list if the ‘hacker’ belonged to the BJP.
Jokes aside, this hydrogen bomb had no fire but the same colour of smoke that we saw earlier – basically Rahul Gandhi using known loopholes and shortcomings in the voting system to paint some kind of grand conspiracy to cheat elections. No wonder he simply didn’t respond when a journalist asked if he would go to courts if he was so convinced about wrongdoings. His agenda is simple – trust Gen Z to be a bunch of absolute morons who would believe his conspiracy theories and take to the roads to indulge in violence. He has seen that around 100 such young people dead can help defeat parties in power. Possibly he finds that an easier route than trying to win 100 more parliamentary seats by 2029.
