The Supreme Court on Monday declined to entertain a plea to set up a Special Investigation Team to inquire into Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s allegations that there was manipulation of the voters' list during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in the Bengaluru Central seat. A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi asked the petitioner, Rohit Pandey, to approach the Election Commission of India (ECI) for redressal of his grievance. "We have heard the petitioner's counsel. We are not inclined to entertain the petition, which is purportedly filed in the public interest. The petitioner may pursue before ECI, if so advised," the bench said. Seeking an independent probe, Pandey claimed that he had himself verified the Congress leader’s charges and "found sufficient prima facie material to establish" that they “reveal a systemic attempt to dilute and distort the value of lawful votes, thereby necessitating urgent intervention by this Hon'ble Court in the larger public interest." He said that he had found thousands of invalid and duplicate entries, and that it “strikes at the very root of the constitutional guarantee enshrined under Article 326 (universal adult suffrage), violates Article 324 (superintendence of free and fair elections by the Election Commission of India)…”. The petitioner urged the court to direct that no further revision or finalisation of electoral rolls be carried out till an independent audit of the rolls is completed. The Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha accused the poll body and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in August this year of perpetrating “a huge criminal fraud” in the elections. During a press conference, he listed out “five different ways” in which the theft was committed in the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat in Karnataka during the Lok Sabha elections last year. He released what he called findings of an investigation carried out by the Congress in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency, which forms part of the Bangalore Central seat, to back his charge. The BJP had won the Bangalore Central seat in the Lok Sabha elections by a margin of 32,707 votes.
