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New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has time and again accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of 'vote theft'.
But now, in a development which has put him in an awkward position, the Congress government in Karnataka has fact-checked him. The Siddaramaiah-led administration has released a statewide survey in which it has found that most of the citizens believe elections in India are free and fair, and they trust the electronic voting machines (EVMs).
According to a report by the Deccan Herald, Chief Electoral Officer V Anbukumar commissioned the survey that had 5,100 respondents across 102 Assembly constituencies in Bengaluru, Belagavi, Kalaburagi, and Mysuru. The Karnataka Monitoring and Evaluation Authority published the report that states that 84.55% of the respondents believed elections here are free and fair, and 83.61% citizens found EVMs trustworthy.
More people are having trust in the EVMs, as 77.9% were in favour of the EVMs in 2023. The report said that the most trust among people was in the Kalaburagi division, followed by the Mysuru division. Notably, Gandhi in September 2025 had accused the ECI of deleting Opposition supporters from the voter list in bulk ahead of the 2023 Karnataka election.
According to News18, BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla has attacked the Congress leader and said, “This is the same Rahul Gandhi who has no problems with the Election Commission when Congress wins in Karnataka, Telangana, and Himachal, but when he loses elections, he blames the poll body. Dosh deta me nahi beta me hai (The problem lies with the son, not the data), but he does not want to accept it because he is living in a delusion."
