Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said his party suspects that the results of as many as 70 to 100 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were manipulated, claiming that “the election system in India is already dead”.

“Remember, the prime minister [Narendra Modi]...holds office with a very slim majority,” Gandhi said at a Congress event. “If 15 seats were rigged and we suspect the number to be much closer to 70 to 100. If 15 seats hadn’t been rigged, he wouldn’t be the prime minister.”

In the 2024 elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party won 240 seats, down from 303 in 2019. Falling short of the 272-seat majority mark, it relied on coalition partners in the National Democratic Alliance to form the government. The Congress secured 99 seats.

Gandhi, who is the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, said the party has “100% proof” to support its claims.

“And we will prove to you that the Lok Sabha can be and was rigged,” he added.

The Election Commission, however, dismissed the allegations as “baseless”.

It said that the Congress leader was repeatedly making “unsubstantiated and misleading” accusations aimed at discrediting its “impartial” work.

Meanwhile, Gandhi claimed that in one constituency, which he did not name, “6.5 lakh voters voted, out of which 1.5 lakh were fake”.

“It makes it clear that the institution that defends the Constitution has been obliterated and taken over,” he said. “There is absolutely no doubt that we have proof that will show that the Election Commission of India does not exist.”

Gandhi said that his party spent six months gathering evidence using the paper-based voter lists provided by the poll body.

The Congress leader added that he had been suspicious about the election results since 2014, especially after the BJP secured sweeping wins in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

But the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly results solidified his doubts.

“In the [2024] Lok Sabha, we won the election [in Maharashtra],” he said. “And then four months later, we didn’t just lose, we were obliterated. Three formidable parties suddenly just evaporated. We started to look seriously for electoral malpractice.”

He added that one crore new voters appeared on the rolls in Maharashtra between the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, and claimed that the bulk of those votes went to the BJP.

Gandhi and the Congress have repeatedly alleged that there was “industrial-scale rigging involving the capture of our national institutions” in the Maharashtra polls held in November.

The BJP-led alliance had defeated the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition, which includes the Congress, in the polls.

On Friday too, the Opposition leader claimed that the party has “open and shut proof” of the Election Commission being involved in “vote theft”.

On July 23, Gandhi claimed that the Congress had “caught a huge theft” in Karnataka, which he will show in “black and white” to the Election Commission.

On June 24, alleging that “vote theft” took place in the Maharashtra Assembly elections, the Congress leader had demanded the immediate release of machine-readable digital voter rolls and CCTV footage.

This came after a Newslaundry report, which said that Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ constituency saw an 8% increase in voters between the Lok Sabha elections, held in May and June 2024, and the Assembly polls.

In February, the Congress had urged the Election Commission to explain how the number of registered voters (9.7 crore) for the Maharashtra Assembly polls was more than the adult population of the state (9.5 crore).

The Election Commission had then said that attempts to defame it by parties that got an unfavourable verdict from voters were “completely absurd”.

‘Unsubstantiated allegations’

Responding to Gandhi’s allegations on Saturday, the Election Commission said that it had extended an invitation to him last year after he alleged electoral malpractice in the Maharashtra election.

There had been “no response from him so far”, the poll panel said.

Gandhi’s “baseless claims such as vote chori [theft]” had “threatened lakhs and lakhs of hardworking election officials across the country”, the Election Commission added in a social media post.

The poll body said that the electoral rolls for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, both draft and final lists, were shared with all political parties, including the Congress, as per the law.

It added that this was appealable under the 1950 Representation of the People Act.

“Hardly any appeals were filed across all 36 states and Union Territories by the Indian National Congress,” the Election Commission said. “In Lok Sabha 2024, only eight election petitions were filed by losing candidates of the [Congress].”