‘Brazilian model voted 22 times’: Rahul Gandhi drops ‘H bomb’ on Haryana polls

Amplifying his allegations of widespread election fraud through faulty electoral rolls, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, on Wednesday dropped his much-awaited "H Bomb", alleging that 2.5 million votes were stolen in the North Indian state of Haryana, a state which has a total of 20 million voters. "This means one in eight voters in Harayana is fake", the Congress leader said.

Addressing a press conference on alleged voter fraud in Haryana Assembly elections, Gandhi said several Congress candidates from the state raised suspicion after the elections that something was wrong. Declaring that Congress would have swept the state. Gandhi further added that Congress was expected to win the elections according to most exit polls. However, the results came in favour of the ruling Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) coming back to power with a massive majority.

To back his claims, the Rae Bareli Member of Parliament (MP) displayed the photo of a Brazilian model, whose image, he claimed, appeared 22 times across polling booths in Harayana under various names such as Seema, Sweety and Saraswati.

“Who is this lady? What is her name? Where does she come from? But she votes 22 times in Haryana, at 10 different booths, and has multiple names: Seema, Sweety, Saraswati, Rashmi, Vilma... But turns out she is actually a Brazilian model,” he alleged.

Moreover, Gandhi said that this is the first instance in Haryana's history when the results of postal voting contradicted the results in polling booths.

"I am questioning the Election Commission and the democratic process in India, and I am doing this with 100 per cent proof. We are sure that a plan was put in motion to convert Congress's landslide victory into a loss," he said.

Accusing the Election Commission of working on the behest of the ruling BJP, Gandhi said Congress lost eight constituencies with very narrow margins, including one seat where the margin was only 32 votes. These margins total to 22,779. "Congress party lost Harayana Assembly elections by just 22,779 votes, to give you context, how close it was," he added.

Strengthening his claims, he cited another example of case duplication where he highlighted 100 voter IDs with the same woman's image in one assembly segment.

"This lady gets to vote 100 times in Haryana if she feels like. This is to create space so that anybody can vote, so that BJP people can move, come from other states and vote," Gandhi asserted. The leader of the opposition displayed another woman's photograph and claimed she featured 223 times in the voter list of two polling booths. "This is the reason the Election Commission destroys CCTV footage of booths," he emphasised.