Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi on Thursday demanded the immediate resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah stood at the top of a conspiracy to “steal elections”. He claimed there was now enough information to say with “100 per cent certainty” that polls in India were being “rigged”.
Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Gandhi said Kumar should “turn approver” and warned that those he held responsible for undermining the electoral process would eventually be punished. He used the word “deshdrohi” and said Modi and Shah would face investigation over the alleged manipulation once the system was “repaired”.
The briefing came a day after reports that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally raised objections at least 14 times over the past 10 months. The reported concerns covered additions and deletions in electoral rolls, changes to Form 6, the SIR process and access to the voter database.
Gandhi opened with videos of Modi and Shah expressing confidence that the BJP would remain in power, and asked how leaders in a democracy could speak with such certainty about their future in office. Anti-incumbency, he said, was the strongest force in Indian politics, noting that even Indira Gandhi faced it within a few years of the Bangladesh war. He cited later swings in Haryana, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, and asked why the same pressure appeared not to apply to Modi and Shah. In making that argument, he also invoked Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and North Korea.
“We have been looking for the answer and we have found the answer,” he said. His presentation described the vote as the foundation of India and the Election Commission as its institutional protector. The Constitution drew authority from the vote, he argued; laws flowed from the Constitution; and institutions emerged from those laws. If the vote itself was compromised, the legitimacy of what followed came into question.
“If the vote has been destroyed, then our Constitution has been destroyed. It no longer has its power. It no longer functions,” Gandhi said. He framed the dispute as one about the “basic infrastructure” of democratic choice and summed it up as “vote chori, kanoon chori, sanstha chori”. If MPs had entered Parliament on “stolen votes”, he claimed, laws they passed would themselves be illegal.
He said he was no longer speaking only of suspicion. “There is already more than enough information to make this a 100 per cent certainty, not 99 per cent,” he claimed, alleging that the 2024 Lok Sabha election and Assembly elections were being rigged. “I have no doubt that within six months this will be black and white,” he added.
Gandhi displayed a timeline beginning on December 21, 2023, with the law on the appointment and service conditions of the CEC and Election Commissioners. He alleged that the legislation gave the CEC protection from investigation. The slides then marked February 7, 2025, his Maharashtra press conference; February 17, 2025, a dissent note against the appointment process; August 7, 2025, what Congress called its “Mahadevapura vote chori” disclosure; the Voter Adhikar Yatra from August 16 to September 1, 2025; and the September 18, 2025, Aland allegation.
The timeline listed October 28, 2025, as the point from which, according to the presentation, the two Election Commissioners began opposing Kumar on some issues, followed by the November 5, 2025, Haryana allegation and a September 23, 2026, media report on differences inside the Commission.
Gandhi said he had written to the Prime Minister in February 2025 arguing that an independent Election Commission required a selection process free of executive interference, and that Kumar’s later appointment should be seen against that background. He claimed pressure on the Commission grew as Congress released material from Maharashtra, Mahadevapura, Aland and Haryana, describing the Haryana presentation as especially significant because of alleged large-scale discrepancies.
The reports about Sandhu and Joshi, he said, marked a turning point because questions were now coming from inside the three-member Commission. “Earlier the institution was denying what we were saying. Now, the institution is accepting what we were saying,” he claimed.
He reserved his sharpest language for Kumar. “This thing that you have done is an act against the Indian nation. This is not just some small thing over an election. This is an attack on the Constitution of India. This is an attack on the legal structure of our country,” Gandhi alleged. “We are not going to let democracy be destroyed in India,” he said, adding that those responsible would be punished “not today, not tomorrow” but eventually.
He praised the two commissioners for recording their concerns and said Kumar should resign and “turn approver”, calling that “an act of nationalism”. The final slide was headed “Deshdrohis will be punished” and placed photographs under headings labelled “conspirators” and “pawns”. It demanded Kumar’s immediate resignation and said Modi and Shah should be investigated over Congress’s alleged conspiracy to steal elections.
Gandhi said he was not using “deshdrohi” lightly and maintained that the accusations were based on information gathered over three years. He alleged that Modi and Shah had “attacked and destroyed the democratic architecture” of the country. These remain allegations by Gandhi and have not been established by a court or an independent investigation.
Asked who would conduct such an inquiry while Modi remained Prime Minister, Gandhi said it would happen once the system was “repaired”. He argued that suspicion about the electoral system had spread beyond the Opposition and that fear inside institutions was beginning to recede, describing the two commissioners as “patriotic”. Remaining silent, he said, would itself be “anti-national”.
On West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s call for INDIA bloc parties to meet and launch a nationwide agitation, Gandhi said the Opposition was united on the issue. “Opposition mein 100 per cent agreement hai ki vote chori ho rahi hai,” he said. He called alleged “vote chori” the single biggest issue facing Indian democracy and said it was the Opposition’s duty to protect the Constitution.