"Vote Missing": Haryana Family After Rahul Gandhi's 'Vote Theft' Claims

An NDTV team travelled to Malikpur village in Sonipat district, part of the Rai constituency. There, they found several voters whose names had mysteriously disappeared from the rolls.

05 Nov 2025, 15:49 · www.ndtv.com

New Delhi:

NDTV's independent investigation has uncovered striking anomalies in the voter rolls of Haryana's Rai Assembly constituency. The findings lend new context to allegations made by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who has accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of orchestrating a "large-scale vote theft" during last year's Haryana Assembly elections.

Gandhi's allegations, first made public on Wednesday, claim that up to 25 lakh votes were "stolen" in the state -- roughly 12.5 per cent of Haryana's 2 crore registered voters. "This means one in eight voters in Haryana are fake, 12.5 per cent," he said, accusing the Election Commission of facilitating, or at least ignoring, what he described as a "centralised operation."

'Brazilian Model' In Voter Rolls

Central to the controversy is a photograph of an alleged Brazilian model. According to the Leader of the Opposition, the photograph appears 22 times across 10 polling booths in the Rai constituency -- each instance tied to a different name.

In a presentation to the press, Gandhi displayed voter list entries where the woman's image appeared under names such as Sweety, Seema, and Saraswati. An independent probe found that the image could be downloaded freely from stock photography websites.

"She votes in 10 different booths in Haryana and she has got multiple names. This means this is a centralised operation," he said.

He further claimed that in another instance, a single woman's photograph appeared 223 times across two polling booths in the same constituency. "This is the reason the Election Commission destroys CCTV footage of booths," he alleged.

NDTV's Investigation

To verify the authenticity of these claims, an NDTV team travelled to Malikpur village in Sonipat district, part of the Rai constituency. There, they found several voters whose names had mysteriously disappeared from the rolls.

Case Study 1: The names of four members of one family -- Rahul, Anuj, Sakshi, and Sonia -- were found missing.

Case Study 2: A villager named Ajay, son of Krishan, could not locate his name on polling day.

Case Study 3: A couple, Saddam and his wife, discovered that both their names had been removed.

Case Study 4: Anjali Tyagi, wife of Amit from Malikpur, told NDTV that she had voted in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections but was unable to do so during the Assembly polls later that year.

"The video shown by Rahul Gandhi regarding vote theft features me. I voted in the Lok Sabha polls, but in the Assembly election, my vote was missing. I don't know why my name was removed," Anjali told NDTV.

Congress spokesperson Rakesh Sauda dismissed the possibility of a clerical or technical error. He referred to the case of "Munesh," a supposed voter whose ID card carried the same Brazilian model's image.

"There is no woman named Munesh married to anyone in our village. This is not an error - it's a clear case of vote theft," he alleged.

"The H-Bomb": Rahul Gandhi's Allegations

Unveiling what he described as the "H-Bomb," Gandhi alleged that a well-organised plan had been executed to convert what he called "Congress's landslide victory into a loss."

"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," Gandhi alleged.

He pointed out that exit polls and internal surveys conducted before the elections had predicted a Congress win, but the final results showed a BJP victory. Gandhi cited a video clip of Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, who, two days after polling, told reporters that "arrangements" had been made and that the BJP was confident of winning.

"What were these arrangements? This is two days after the election when everybody is saying that the Congress party is sweeping the election. This gentleman is very sure and smiling that the BJP has made arrangements," Gandhi alleged.

Gandhi also drew attention to the unusual pattern in postal ballots, claiming it was the first time in Haryana's electoral history that postal votes went in the opposite direction of polling booth results.

According to Gandhi, Congress candidates had raised concerns immediately after the results, reporting inconsistencies in polling-day figures. He said the party lost eight constituencies by razor-thin margins, including one by just 32 votes. Together, these narrow losses amounted to a total margin of 22,779 votes, nearly the same as the margin by which the BJP secured its majority.

Election Commission's Response

Sources within the Election Commission (EC) told NDTV that the Commission routinely conducts a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) to identify and delete duplicate or invalid entries from the electoral rolls.

They questioned why the Congress party did not raise objections during that process. "They are supposed to object if the elector has already voted or if they doubt the identity of the elector," a source said.

The source also questioned Gandhi's assumption that fake voters supported the BJP.

"If (Congress leader) Pawan Khera has names in the voter lists of two states, is he voting twice?" the source added.

According to sources, the EC's voter database can automatically flag duplicate entries, suggesting that large-scale duplication of the kind alleged would have been easily detected.

BJP's Counterattack

Union Minister Kiren Rijiju dismissed the allegations as "another baseless narrative" from Rahul Gandhi.

"Polling is happening in Bihar, yet he's telling stories about Haryana. There's nothing left in Bihar, so he's shifting the narrative to Haryana," Rijiju said. "They say they were winning in exit polls and opinion polls. But there's always a difference between poll predictions and actual results. This keeps happening - it's nothing new. We never made any allegations against the Election Commission."

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