New Delhi: The BJP Friday termed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s allegation of irregularities in the Maharashtra assembly polls “baseless and frivolous” and said it is nothing more than the “whining of a sore loser”.
Alleging “numerous irregularities” in the Maharashtra polls, Gandhi earlier in the day claimed there were more registered voters than the entire state’s adult population, and more voters were added in five months between the Lok Sabha election and the state polls than in the five years before that.
He also claimed the majority of the voters added gave their mandate in the BJP’s favour as the opposition parties have maintained their vote share in the assembly polls.
If the demand to the Election Commission by the state’s opposition parties — Congress, Shiv Sena-UBT and NCP-SP — to be given centralised data of voters’ list for the Lok Sabha elections 2024 and the assembly polls 2024, is not met, the next step would be to approach the judiciary, Gandhi said.
Reacting to the Congress leader’s remarks, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said in a post on X, “What does he gain by levelling such false and frivolous allegations against constitutional institutions like the Election Commission of India?”
BJP IT department head Amit Malviya slammed Gandhi for his allegations, terming it “baseless”.
“His allegations are baseless – nothing more than the whining of a sore loser,” he said in a post on X.
The BJP leader underlined that on January 18, Gandhi said one crore voters were added to Maharashtra’s electoral rolls just before the Assembly polls.
“On February 3, (while) speaking in Parliament, he claimed that the number was 70 lakh. Today, he came up with a new number of 39 lakh. Does the Leader of Opposition even know what he speaks?” Malviya said.
Terming Gandhi’s claim “false and baseless”, BJP Rajya Sabha MP from Maharashtra Bhagwat Karad said people gave their mandate to the ‘Mahayuti’ in the assembly polls due to the work done by its government in the state and the Narendra Modi government at the Centre.
“If it was so (if Rahul Gandhi’s claim was true), we would have emerged victorious everywhere (across all assembly seats),” he contended.
“We lost the Jharkhand assembly polls. We are not levelling any allegation,” he told PTI in the Parliament complex when asked for a comment.
Karad claimed that the Maha Vikas Aghadi, comprising the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (Sharad Pawar), suffered defeat in the Maharashtra assembly elections as they had lost “people’s trust”.
That is why Maharashtra elected a stable government of Mahayuti which will do “good work” during its term in the state, he added.
