New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi on Thursday (September 18) made an allegation that is much bigger and more serious than the so-called ‘atom bomb’ he dropped in his last press briefing.If, in his last outing, he showed proof of the wrongful addition and deletion of electors in select constituencies in Karnataka and Maharashtra, he alleged in his latest briefing that such deletions and additions were happening in a centralised way through a software that created fake logins in the Election Commission (EC)’s portals to fill up Form 7 that is mandatory to add or delete legitimate electors.The grave allegations hit at the core of Indian electoral democracy. The use of an automated software to tweak electoral rolls, if proven to be true, will take his “vote chori” campaign to the next level, as Gandhi has now opened up discussions around not merely an organised attempt in electoral rigging but a possible panopticon to monitor citizens’ political preferences, in which the EC may be complicit.Several pointers that Gandhi presented suggest a similar dystopic control over citizens.One, he alleged that the “someone” who created fake logins to request the deletion of electors from a few booths in Aland, Karnataka or add them in Rajura, Maharashtra – all traditional Congress strongholds, according to the leader of opposition – may not be an individual but could be a company or a “call centre”, that ran an automated software to first identify electors listed as “serial no.1” in these polling booths, and use their identities to demand the deletion or addition of other electors in these booths.Gandhi showed that all such applications to the EC to delete electors came from those who were listed as the first voter of their respective booths. He went on to present two such applicants who denied making any such requests to delete voters or filling up Form 7.Two, Gandhi, and later other Congress leaders, alleged that these were organised attempts to contaminate electoral rolls in a centralised way by “someone” who has clear political interests – that of disenfranchising those who are considered to be supporters of the biggest opposition party.The Congress leaders presented two slides which showed that some of these elaborate and complicated Form 7 requests were made in lightning-fast time.The identity of one such applicant, Suryakant, was allegedly used to make a request to delete 12 voters in merely 14 minutes. Another person called Nagaraj, again listed as the first voter of his booth, allegedly filled up and submitted two applications in only 36 seconds. Both of them were blissfully unaware of the fact that their identities were being misused through fake phone numbers.Three, the fake phone numbers, Gandhi alleged, were from different states, implying that “someone” sitting outside used an automated program to target the electoral rolls of specific polling booths.These are serious charges that can shake the very foundations of Indian democracy. In his last briefing, Gandhi alleged that nearly 15% of electors in one Karnataka assembly constituency, Mahadevapura, could be fraudulent and didn’t exist.The contamination of electoral rolls is not new in India, but if the scale of it is truly so humongous, as the Congress leader pointed out in the case of Mahadevapura, it will crush people’s belief in the Indian electoral system.A recent survey by the Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Democratic Societies has already shown how the idea that elections are free and fair has received a massive blow in the recent past, and the percentage of those who think that something may be wrong in the way elections are being conducted in the last decade has spiked sharply.EC’s knee-jerk responseThe EC’s first response was again knee-jerk. It said that electors can’t be deleted or added online, but stopped short of replying to Gandhi’s primary allegation of mass applications for deletions in Aland, the apparent use of fake mobile numbers, the possibility of an automated software to attempt a serious contamination of electoral rolls and the misuse of real electors’ identities in the process.What is worse is that the EC in trying to dismiss Gandhi’s claims actually verified his allegations when it accepted that “unsuccessful attempts” were made to delete electors in Aland.It further said that an FIR was registered by the EC itself – a fact that Gandhi had acknowledged during his presentation but added that the probe began only when a booth-level officer (BLO) found that her uncle had been wrongfully deleted from the rolls on a request by her neighbourOnly when the neighbour-cum-applicant denied having put in any such request for deletion, the whole fraud was exposed.After the EC’s response raised more questions than answers, Karnataka’s chief electoral officer posted an unsigned note on X on Thursday evening. His response has verified many of Gandhi’s claims.Aland Case 2023@ECISVEEP pic.twitter.com/Z35F0PlWPW— Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka (@ceo_karnataka) September 18, 2025The EC was aware that Aland constituency “received 6,018 applications in Form 7 which were submitted online” through various government apps in December 2022, raising suspicions. The EC claims that 5,994 of these applications were found to be incorrect and 24 deletion requests were found to be genuine.The poll body said that the electoral officer lodged an FIR with the Kalaburagi police based on the facts that emerged from initial inquiries by BLOs.It also added, in trying to refute Gandhi’s allegation that the EC has not cooperated with the Karnataka crime investigation department (CID) in sharing information pertaining to the case, that it has already shared “objector’s details, including form reference numbers, name of the objector, his EPIC number and mobile number used for log-in and mobile number proving by the objector for processing, software application medium, IP address, applicant place, form submission date and time, and user creation date.”The response, although a more reassuring one than the initial X post, still ignores the Karnataka CID’s claim that none of this information shared includes what it has consistently been asking for to advance the probe, namely destination IPs, device destination ports and OTP trails used along with the fake mobile numbers.Documents seen by The Wire suggest that while the Karnataka police received IP logs from the poll body, these were as of January this year found to not contain details of either destination IP addresses or of destination ports.The state CID has maintained that only when these are shared by the EC will it be in a position to reach the “someone” that tried to contaminate the electoral rolls in Aland and is potentially the mastermind of the fraud. That someone could be a person, a company, a call centre or even a security threat.‘Someone’ really wants to tweak electoral rollsGandhi’s contention is that the EC did not heed the Karnataka CID’s demand in spite of the latter making “18 requests in 18 months”. What were merely allegations after Gandhi’s press briefing in the morning have turned out to be real facts by the evening after the EC’s confirmation that there was indeed an organised and centralised attempt by “someone” to tweak electoral rolls.The Karnataka CEO’s note confirm that out of the 6,018 applications to delete electors in 10 polling booths of Aland, 5,994 were found to be forged. The Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) who filed the complaint was alerted by BLOs and Congress legislator B.R Patil about the forgery. Eventually, only 24 applications were found to be genuine; the remaining applications were rejected and an FIR was lodged against the malpractice.There are multiple questions that emerge from Gandhi’s presentation. Is the EC’s verification process of Form 7 applications – both online and offline – that entirely relies on BLOs on the ground foolproof? Who is that “someone” that profits from such blatant tinkering with India’s democratic process? Are companies or people with vested interests really using automated software programmes to centralise their efforts to tinker with electoral rolls? Why is the EC always in a hurry to dismiss such allegations that are being put forward with prima facie credible evidence? Is this a pan-India phenomenon? As more and more allegations of vote theft are surfacing, does the EC now need to build its own capacity to tackle such real attempts?It is on the EC’s shoulders to not merely conduct free and fair elections, but also to take into confidence Indian citizens who have become increasingly anxious about the lack of a level playing field in the polls.Constituting a high-level judicial commission, an independent probe or even a transparent investigation that involves all political parties and independent experts is the way forward, and not another defensive move by the EC under Gyanesh Kumar, whose recent conduct has increasingly made the chief election commissioner’s chair and its assumed independence more and more fragile.