The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday said that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was disrespecting Indian democracy by making allegations of electoral irregularities during his visit to the United States.

BJP MP Sambit Patra called Gandhi a “traitor”, saying that the Congress leader had not only allegedly insulted India’s institutions and democracy abroad, but also because he had allegedly seized national wealth through National Herald. The comment was a reference to a money-laundering case linked to the newspaper.

At an event in Boston on Sunday, the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha cited the Maharashtra Assembly election result to allege that the Election Commission had been “compromised” and that there was “something wrong with the system”, ANI reported.

Rahul Gandhi reiterated his claim that more persons had voted in the Maharashtra polls than there were adults in the state.

“The Election Commission gave us a voting figure for 5.30 pm, and between 5.30 pm and 7.30 pm, 65 lakh voters voted,” Rahul Gandhi was quoted as having claimed. “This is physically impossible to happen. For a voter to vote, it takes approximately three minutes, and if you do the math, it would mean that there were lines of voters till 2 am, but this did not happen.”

In the Assembly polls held in November, the state’s ruling alliance comprising the BJP, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena group and the Nationalist Congress Party faction led by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar won 230 out of the 288 seats. The Maha Vikas Aghadi, which Congress is a party of, won 46 seats.

Rahul Gandhi said on Sunday that when his party asked for the videos of the election process, “they not only refused but they also changed the law so that now we are not allowed to ask for the videography”.

“It is very clear to us that the Election Commission is compromised, and it is very clear that there is something wrong with the system,” Rahul Gandhi said.

As first reported by Scroll, the BJP-led Union government in December amended Rule 93(2)(a) of the Conduct of Election Rules, which stated that “all other papers relating to the election shall be open to public inspection”.

The amended rule says: “All other papers as specified in these rules relating to the election shall be open to public inspection.”

With this change – notified by the Union Ministry of Law and Justice, in consultation with the Election Commission – not all poll-related papers can be inspected by the public. Only those papers specified in the 1961 Conduct of Election Rules can be inspected by the public.

The courts would also not be able to direct the poll panel to provide all election-related papers for public scrutiny.

This came days after the Punjab and Haryana High Court on December 9 directed the Election Commission to provide videography, security camera footage and copies of documents related to votes polled at a polling station during the recent Haryana Assembly polls to advocate Mehmood Pracha.

The Congress has challenged the amendment to the election rules in the Supreme Court.

On April 15, the Enforcement Directorate filed a chargesheet against Rahul Gandhi and former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, among others, for alleged money laundering in the National Herald case.

This followed the central agency’s move to seize properties worth Rs 661 crore linked to the case. The properties are located in Delhi, Mumbai and Lucknow.

The central agency had attached the properties in November 2023 through a provisional attachment order issued in a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The case has been filed against the newspaper’s publisher, Associated Journals Limited and its holding company, Young Indian Private Limited.

Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi are majority shareholders of Young Indian and hold 38% of its shares each.

The Congress has said that the action was “nothing but the politics of vendetta and intimidation”.

The party has claimed that there was no money exchange and that only debt was converted into equity to pay off certain dues including employee salaries.