Anurag Thakur accuses opposition of winning seats through fake and duplicate voter entries, cites examples from key constituencies
NEW DELHI, August 13, 2025
In response to the Congress’ recent “vote chori” allegations, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has replied, casting doubt on whether former Congress president Sonia Gandhi will be included to accusing the opposition of misusing “ghuspaithi” (infiltrator) ballots and releasing the voter list. Anurag Thakur, the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, told reporters that the Congress and other opposition parties used mass voting, phony addresses, duplicate voters, and manipulated ages to win elections in a number of areas.
He gave instances from Rahul Gandhi’s Raebareli, TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee’s Diamond Harbour seat, and Akhilesh Yadav’s Kannauj seat. In order to protect its support base, Thakur accused the Congress of engaging in appeasement politics by resisting the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the Bihar electoral registers.
Sonia Gandhi’s name was initially listed on the voting lists in 1980, three years before she obtained Indian citizenship, according to BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya, who further escalated the attack by alleging that this was against election law. According to him, her name was on the list with Indira, Rajiv, Sanjay, and Maneka Gandhi at the Gandhi family’s previous home, 1, Safdarjung Road. Malviya claims that the name was later dropped in 1982 due to criticism, but it was brought back in 1983. He said that this was an obvious case of electoral fraud.
The controversy began with Rahul Gandhi’s news conference on August 7. He accused the Election Commission of widespread irregularities, pointing to things like “one crore mystery voters,” missing CCTV video, phony entries, and the rejection of voter-related data.
