Rahul sounds 'match-fixing' alarm again, says Bihar next

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday renewed his allegation of electoral malpractices in last November's assembly election in Maharashtra that the BJP-led alliance swept and said "match-fixing will come next in Bihar", which goes to polls later this year.

Gandhi, who has been attacking the central government over its handling of Operation Sindoor, again raised the allegation of electoral malpractices in identical articles written in more than a dozen newspapers and through social media posts. He focussed his charges more on the authenticity of electoral rolls and high voter turnouts and less on electronic voting machines. He again objected to the Chief Justice of India not being part of the search committee for election commissioners. Incidentally, all these issues are topics of petitions currently pending before the apex court.

Maintaining the Maharashtra poll was a blueprint for "how to steal an election" and "for rigging democracy", Gandhi claimed it was done through various steps. "Step 1: Rig the panel for appointing the Election Commission, Step 2: Add fake voters to the roll, Step 3: Inflate voter turnout, Step 4: Target the bogus voting exactly where BJP needs to win, Step 5: Hide the evidence. It's not hard to see why the BJP was so desperate in Maharashtra," he wrote on microblogging platform X. "But rigging is like match-fixing - the side that cheats might win the game, but damages institutions and destroys public faith in the result. All concerned Indians must see the evidence. Judge for themselves. Demand answers. Because the match-fixing of Maharashtra will come to Bihar next, and then anywhere the BJP is losing. Match-fixed elections are a poison for any democracy," he said.


Gandhi renewing the charges over Maharashtra election results after a pause on the front and the fact that his latest burst is mostly a summary of the old charges, have made many in the Congress wonder whether he was using it more as a caveat ahead of the upcoming Bihar assembly poll, where Gandhi's new-found switch to 'social justice' plank has high-stakes. They said his article is mostly inspired by the "investigations" done by the AICC's data wing.