The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Karnataka on 10th August issued a formal notice to Congress leader and Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, requesting documentary evidence to substantiate his allegations of voting fraud in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The notice follows Gandhi’s press conference in New Delhi on August 7, where he accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of electoral malpractices.
In the notice, the CEO referenced Gandhi’s specific claim that a 70-year-old voter named Shakun Rani had voted twice, citing ECI data. A preliminary inquiry by the office revealed that Rani voted only once, and the notice urged Gandhi to provide relevant records for a detailed investigation, stating, “You are kindly requested to provide the relevant documents on the basis of which you have concluded that Shakun Rani or anyone else has voted twice, so that a detailed inquiry can be undertaken by this office.”
Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka gives Lok Sabha LoP Notice for providing documents to inquire into allegations made in his Press Conference in New Delhi on 07.08.2025.
— ANI (@ANI) August 10, 2025
"You are kindly requested to provide the relevant documents on the basis of which you have concluded that… pic.twitter.com/djO1b5G0Oj
The notice also noted that a tick-marked document shown in Gandhi’s presentation, allegedly indicating double voting, was not an official polling record.
Gandhi’s allegations stem from a broader accusation of “vote theft” in the Mahadevapura Assembly segment of the Bangalore Central constituency. During his August 7 press conference, he claimed that over 1,00,250 votes were fraudulently cast through five methods, including duplicate voter registrations, fake entries with nonsensical details, and multiple EPIC (Electoral Photo Identity Card) IDs for the same individuals.
