‘Vote chori’ can’t be an election issue, says AAP’s Saurabh Bharadwaj, echoing Rahul Gandhi’s charge against BJP

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Saurabh Bharadwaj said there is an ‘organised’ vote theft, as accused by Rahul Gandhi, across the country. But the former minister in the Delhi government said ‘vote chori’ cannot be made an election issue.

“There is an organised vote chori happening across India. I am convinced because I have seen it firsthand in Delhi,” Bharadwaj told the Indian Express on Monday, sharing his remarks about the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi's allegations.

“As a voter, I don’t think people vote thinking that since there was vote chori (vote theft), they will not vote for the BJP. You can’t really make it an election issue — but you can make it a mass movement across the country,” Bharadwaj, who is the Delhi president of the AAP said.

Rahul Gandhi has accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission of India (EC) of systematically manipulating electoral rolls and distorting vote counting to favour the ruling party at the Centre. The Election Commission has rubbished the charge. Gandhi made this an issue in poll-bound Bihar, where he led a ‘voter adhikar’ rally to raise the issue with voters two months ahead of this week's assembly polls.

No action taken on complaints: Bharadwaj

“When I lost in Delhi (in 2025), in my constituency — as a sitting MLA — I knew I was winning. Even the BJP knew it. So when I lost, I was convinced there was some kind of manipulation,” Bharadwaj said, referring to his loss from the Greater Kailash seat in the 2024 Delhi assembly polls to BJP's Shikha Rai.

“In the New Delhi constituency during the 2020 Legislative Assembly election, there were 1.48 lakh votes. By December 2024, that number had gone up to around 1.6 lakh votes. Yet, 42,000 votes had already been deleted,” Bharadwaj said, adding that, “If you the pattern of these deletions, and if you speak to the people in whose names these deletion applications were filed — they are on record saying they never filed such applications.”

The then Delhi Chief Minister, Atishi, submitted a written complaint with evidence to the Election Commission (EC) regarding how this exercise was being carried out, but no FIR has been filed yet, the former minister said.

"I filed an RTI in August 2025, almost eight months after we had submitted the complaint, asking for its status. For every question, the reply was the same: We have no information,” he said.

What did the Election Commission say on Rahul's charge?

The Election Commission on Wednesday countered Gandhi's ‘vote chori’ claims by releasing a list of ‘important facts’ for the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections on social media.

This comes after Rahul alleged that the 2024 Haryana Assembly polls were rigged in favour of the BJP. He claimed that 25 lakh votes were stolen in Haryana through the addition of 5.21 lakh duplicate voters, 93,174 invalid voters, and 19.26 lakh bulk voters.