Opinion | Vote Chori, History, And The Battle For Democratic Credibility |
For years now, “vote chori" has been Rahul Gandhi’s most potent political buzzword; a phrase deployed with regularity, rhythm, and repetition to cast a long shadow over India’s electoral process. From alleging irregularities in Bengaluru Central’s Mahadevapura constituency to claiming that 25 lakh votes were “stolen" in Haryana in 2024, Gandhi has used press conferences, yatras, and social media to seed doubt.
Fact-checks by the Election Commission of India (ECI), rebuttals by constitutional authorities, and counter-statements by BJP leaders did little to halt the narrative he was carefully constructing: that India’s elections are somehow compromised when the Congress loses.
This strategy reached its peak after the first leg of the Vote Adhikar Yatra in Bihar, a state the Congress ultimately failed to win when Gandhi confidently declared that the slogan “vote chor gaddi chor" was spreading “like fire because it’s the truth." The assertion mattered less for its accuracy and more for its intent. It sought to normalise suspicion, to make distrust of electoral outcomes an acceptable default reaction among supporters.
When the Congress-led Opposition proposed a discussion on electoral reforms and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls, it likely expected a technical debate, one that would keep the focus on alleged procedural flaws. Instead, the BJP seized an unexpected opening. What followed was not a routine rebuttal, but a full-scale political counteroffensive led by Home........