Senior Congress leader and Lok Sabha MP KC Venugopal on Thursday launched a scathing attack on the Election Commission of India (ECI), alleging that the poll body has “sided with the BJP government” to influence the 2025 and 2026 assembly elections.
Venugopal, who was on a one-day visit to Kolkata, held a closed-door meeting with the senior leadership of the West Bengal Congress and reviewed the party’s organizational structure in the state. He said he would submit a detailed report on the situation to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Speaking to reporters, Venugopal alleged that the BJP and the ECI have been working in tandem since the 2024 Lok Sabha elections to facilitate “large-scale vote manipulation.”
“We know what kind of fraud is happening, but finding proof takes enormous time and effort,” he said. “Teams have to go through huge printouts of voter lists to identify bogus voters. Sometimes this takes seven months. If we had soft copies, it would take a second. That is why the Election Commission never gives us digital voter rolls or CCTV footage.”
Referring to the BJP’s charge that Rahul Gandhi’s recent presentation on “Vote Chori” (vote theft) was prepared abroad, Venugopal said the ruling party was only trying to discredit Gandhi because it fears the impact of the revelations.
“Whenever the truth comes from Rahul Gandhi, the Congress or any other Opposition party, the BJP tries to dismiss it with such allegations. Now the entire BJP is exposed across the country. The whole nation believes in ‘Vote Chori’. ‘Vote Chor, Gaddi Chhodd’ has become a national slogan. Not only in Bihar, it is in the hearts of people everywhere,” he said.
The Congress leader further claimed that evidence of irregularities had already been unearthed in at least one assembly constituency in Karnataka. “Rahul Gandhi has exposed everything. That is why the BJP is trying desperately to humiliate him, but it will not succeed,” Venugopal said.
He also alleged that the ECI was not acting impartially. “The Election Commission is totally siding with the government of India to sabotage the elections. The BJP is worried about its declining popularity and is resorting to these tactics,” he added.
Venugopal’s remarks come at a time when the Congress has intensified its campaign against what it calls systematic electoral malpractice under the Modi government. The party has announced that it will continue to raise the issue of “vote theft” in Parliament as well as in public meetings across the country.
