Hooda, Narender Rao back Rahul, announce statewide protests

Announcing statewide protests and candle marches, senior Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Wednesday backed Rahul Gandhi’s explosive claims of large-scale voter fraud in the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections, alleging that the Election Commission “collaborated” with the BJP to manipulate results and “steal” the people’s mandate.

Addressing a press conference, along with PCC chief Rao Narender Singh and former state president Udai Bhan, Hooda said the election results “defied logic and public sentiment”, claiming that “no survey had projected the BJP beyond 29 seats.”

Hooda said Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi had presented “concrete evidence” of voter fraud, including sudden increases in vote counts, duplicate entries, and fake identities. “On polling day, the Election Commission reported 61.19% turnout. By the 7th, it became 67.9%. How did more than 6% votes appear overnight? Around 15,000 votes were added per constituency,” he claimed.

Hooda demanded that the Election Commission respond to what he termed “serious questions of credibility.” He pointed out that the Congress had led in 73 seats during postal ballot counting, but fell behind once EVM votes were tallied. “In five consecutive elections, whoever led in postal ballots formed the government. This time was the exception and that cannot be ignored,” he said.

He further claimed that the Congress’s vote share had increased by 11% compared to the previous election, while dismissing any talk of factionalism within the party.

Rao Narender Singh said Rahul Gandhi’s revelations had “blown the lid off” what he called a systematic subversion of democracy. “Rahul has shown that 25 lakh votes were fake, one in every eight votes was bogus. The mandate has been stolen. This is not just a Congress issue, this is about the Constitution itself,” he said.

The state Congress chief announced that district-level protests would begin this week. He claimed that fake voters were created using photographs of an alleged Brazilian model. “In 10 booths, 22 votes were cast using the same photo under different names. In one booth alone, 223 votes carried her picture. One household had 501 registered voters. Across the state, 1.24 lakh fake photos were found,” he alleged.

Several BJP workers and leaders were registered as voters in both Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, he said. “Even a house numbered ‘0’ was shown to have hundreds of voters. That is how far this fraud has gone,” he added.