Rahul Gandhi is asked why Congress hasn’t endorsed Tejashwi as CM face. His response: ‘The focus is…’

The press conference took place amid the Voter Adhikar Yatra launched by Rahul Gandhi to mobilise public support in Bihar against what the Opposition calls “vote theft” through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. It was also attended by CPI-ML (Liberation) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya and Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) chief Mukesh Sahani.

“The yatra has been very successful… This overwhelming response shows that crores of people in Bihar agree with what we’ve been saying about ‘vote chori’,” Rahul Gandhi said.

He accused the BJP and the EC of working in coordination to remove legitimate voters. “SIR is an institutionalised method of vote theft… There is a partnership between the Election Commission and the BJP,” he said.

The Congress leader further accused the EC of failing in its constitutional responsibility to maintain a fair and accurate voter list in states like Maharashtra, Haryana, and Karnataka. “In Bihar, we will not allow vote theft to happen. You may have done it elsewhere, but here, we will stop you,” he said.

On Karnataka, he said, “I presented black-and-white data about fake voters in Mahadevapura… I said there are fake voters and was asked to file an affidavit within five minutes. When Anurag Thakur said the same thing, no affidavit was sought from him till now… This clearly shows where the Election Commission stands.”

Tejashwi Yadav echoed these concerns, alleging that the EC “has become a ‘Godi Commission’, functioning like a BJP cell.”

Amid the show of Opposition unity, when asked why the Congress isn’t endorsing Tejashwi as the alliance’s chief minister face in Bihar, Rahul sidestepped the question, instead emphasising alliance unity. “There is mutual respect among all partners. We are ideologically and politically aligned. There is no tension. The focus now is to stop vote theft,” he said.