Rahul Gandhi alleges widespread vote theft in Haryana; Election Commission, BJP reject charge

Rahul Gandhi held a packed press conference in Delhi on Wednesday to set out what he called the “H files”, a dossier alleging large-scale manipulation of the Haryana assembly poll. The leader of the opposition claimed that roughly 25 lakh votes in the state were duplicate, bogus or otherwise manipulated, and described the material as “100% proof” of a coordinated scheme.

Evidence presented at the briefing included lists of names, repeated entries and what the speaker said were instances of a single photograph being used for multiple voter identities. A widely circulated example cited at the press event claimed that a photograph of a Brazilian model had been used under different Indian names across several polling locations; the line that a “Brazilian model voted 22 times” gained immediate traction on social platforms.

Allegations and the 'H files'

The H files listed ten categories of alleged irregularity, including duplicate registrations, bulk registrations at particular booths, and apparent entry of non-existent persons on the electoral rolls. A claimed scale of manipulation — one in every eight voters in Haryana — was framed as the core finding, with the dossier described as documenting patterns across the state rather than isolated incidents.

Mr Gandhi asserted that the anomalies had altered the outcome of the election and accused what he called a collusion between political actors and some officials tasked with maintaining the voter roll. The allegation that exit polls had predicted a Congress win before the results, and that official returns contradicted those projections through manipulation, formed part of the narrative offered at the briefing.

#BREAKING

Rahul Gandhi alleged massive vote fraud in #Haryana elections, claiming over 25 lakh fake votes were cast

He says one woman voted 22 times under different names..Seema, Sweety, Saraswati....

He claims a Brazilian model was also in Haryana’s voter list..Calling it… pic.twitter.com/q3HMMyTA6F

— Nabila Jamal (@nabilajamal_) November 5, 2025

Responses, official pushback

The Election Commission of India questioned the timing and the basis of the claims, pointing out that Congress agents had not raised formal objections during the revision process for Haryana’s electoral roll. Officials emphasised that the statutory mechanism for identifying duplicate or invalid entries relies in part on scrutiny by party agents, and asked why no objections were recorded at that stage.

Bharatiya Janata Party spokespeople dismissed the dossier as fabricated and politically motivated, saying the allegations were an attempt to distract from the Bihar campaign. Senior ministers and party functionaries urged restraint and called for any evidence to be handed to the proper legal and administrative channels rather than used for mass mobilisation.

Congress party representatives defended the press conference as a lawful attempt to draw attention to perceived vulnerabilities in the electoral process. Party officials said the H files comprised data gathered during routine checks and that further forensic examination could be sought through legal petitions and technical probes rather than purely political debate.

Security and electoral administrators were reported to be monitoring the aftermath for any risk of unrest in polling districts. Local election machinery increased liaison with police units to ensure that campaigning remained peaceful and that allegations did not spill over into disruptive street protests ahead of scheduled polling phases.

A number of independent fact-checkers and journalists began reviewing the datasets released at the press conference to verify the examples cited in the H files. Preliminary checks by some news desks found that certain names and entries cited in the dossier required further authentication and that photographs and identity records needed forensic validation to establish any deliberate misuse.

Electoral law experts commented that formal complaints, statutory revision objections or petitions to the Election Commission would be the normal route for addressing alleged roll irregularities. Those experts said administrative remedies existed to purge duplicate or ineligible entries, but that proving purposeful, large-scale manipulation would require chain-of-custody documentation and technical analysis of the electoral roll database.