
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) hit out at the Election Commission (EC), declaring that ‘Vote Chori’ (vote theft) is no new issue and was first exposed by Arvind Kejriwal on 29 December 2024 — long before Congress leader Rahul Gandhi spoke of it today. AAP Delhi State President Saurabh Bharadwaj said the Election Commission refused to probe the matter despite glaring evidence, and when it finally summoned applicants for vote deletions, only 11 people turned up — all of whom denied filing such requests. The AAP Delhi unit chief revealed that in the New Delhi Assembly constituency alone, 42,000 votes were deleted out of 1.48 lakh in one go, with another 6,100 removed later. He added that while only 84 people applied for the deletion of 4,000 votes, applications were filed to create more than 10,000 fake votes. He warned that for the past 11 years, a systematic conspiracy of fraudulent vote theft has been murdering democracy across the country.
Today, that press conference happened
On Thursday, senior AAP leader and Delhi State President Saurabh Bharadwaj said, “For several days, we were waiting for Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s press conference. Today, that press conference happened, and he pointed to a place in Karnataka called Aland, where he said around 6,000 votes were wrongly deleted. He explained it well, but what he explained was theoretical, and based on old matters. Even the EC had responded to it in some way. I am not placing any new facts before you today, but I want to tell the people of the country through you all that the very thing Rahul Gandhi said on 18th September 2025 was already said, with evidence, by Arvind Kejriwal on 29th December 2024—nine months ago, two months before the Delhi elections.”
Who were not BJP voters
The AAP Delhi unit chief continued, “At that press conference, Arvind Kejriwal presented evidence of how names were being selected for deletion—specifically the names of voters who were not BJP voters, but AAP voters in Delhi. Profiling can happen in many ways: through your social media, by asking around in your neighbourhood, through BJP’s booth-level agents. Profiling is not difficult; it is easy to tell who is a firm AAP voter. Profiling also happens by caste, by class, whether you are poor or rich. Once profiled as an AAP voter, applications were filed under the names of other people to get their votes deleted.” When verification was done, those people denied ever filing such applications. Rahul Gandhi today explained this theoretically, but we showed it practically by producing those very people before the EC who denied filing the applications.”
Submitted hundreds of deletion applications.
Saurabh Bharadwaj said videos of Arvind Kejriwal’s 29th December 2024 press conference are available as proof. He detailed how the EC was forced to issue notices and summon people who had allegedly submitted hundreds of deletion applications. “When they were called, only 11 people showed up, and all 11 denied ever filing such applications. How is it possible that one person sitting at home could file applications saying 108 different people don’t live at their address? What is he, IB? CID? Or is he a domestic worker who knows who has moved out? This is not possible. Who are these people? And why didn’t the EC investigate after we exposed this?” He asked.