News Brief
'Such Allegations Scare Neither The Election Commission Nor Any Voter': Poll Panel Chief Gyanesh Kumar Hits Back At Rahul Gandhi
The Election Commission of India office in New Delhi. (Harikrishna Katragadda/Mint via Getty Images) (File Photo)
The Election Commission of India (EC) on Sunday (17 August) firmly rejected Opposition allegations of “vote chori” (theft), citing voter privacy as the reason for not sharing CCTV footage from polling booths, reported Hindustan Times.
Addressing a press conference in Delhi, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar accused the Opposition of trying to “mislead the voters,” calling such attempts “nothing less than an insult of the Constitution.”
Responding to demands for machine-readable voter lists, Kumar said, “The Supreme Court has already held in 2019, that it could breach a voter's privacy.”
He pointed out that some parties, including the Congress, had raised concerns about fake names and duplicate entries, but no proof was provided.
Kumar criticised the release of voters’ photographs to the media without consent, saying, “We saw recently, that some voters' photos were shown to the media without their consent; and allegations were made using them.”
He also dismissed the demand for CCTV footage, asking, “Should the Election Commission share CCTV videos of anyone's mother, daughter-in-law, sister, or of anyone else?”.
He added that only those who have their names on the voter lists can vote in an election.
“In such a transparent process, can anyone steal votes?” he asked.
He said no proof was provided to back allegations of people voting twice.
The EC had earlier asked Rahul Gandhi to submit proof under oath, but Gandhi responded that he had already taken the oath of the Constitution as a member of Parliament, and that the EC could simply check its own data that he had cited.
Kumar said that such false accusations "scare neither the Election Commission nor any voter"
In response to questions later, he said Rahul Gandhi must apologise: "If within seven days I don't get the oath, it means he is a liar and he blamed my voters as liars."
