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.
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.”
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.”
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.
The AAP Delhi Unit Head stated, “Questions must be asked of then Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar and of Gyanesh Kumar. Instead of investigating, they just kept reciting bad shaayri. Clear evidence of impersonation was given, yet no investigation was ordered. Why? Because they knew exactly who was behind it.”
He further revealed that in the New Delhi constituency alone, where Arvind Kejriwal contested, 42,000 names had already been deleted—reducing the rolls from 1,48,000 to 1,06,000 voters. Even then, another 6,100 deletion applications and 10,500 new voter applications were filed in the last month. “Some individuals filed hundreds of deletion requests—Tarun Kumar Chautala tried to delete 108 votes, Usha Devi 22 votes, Rajkumar 82 votes—yet when produced, they all denied ever submitting such applications. Still, the EC showed no interest in investigating. How can this happen?”
Saurabh Bharadwaj said this practice was not new, recalling how Arvind Kejriwal and AAP had already campaigned against mass voter deletions before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. “Arvind Kejriwal had tweeted that 30 lakh votes were similarly deleted by the BJP in Delhi, and that this was happening all across the country in collusion with the EC. In Telangana, badminton player Jwala Gutta and her entire family’s votes were deleted before the elections. Poor people in unauthorized colonies, in jhuggis, in villages—every election, they go to vote and find their names missing. This has been happening repeatedly since 2013–14. Votes are not supposed to be deleted without verification, yet in the past decade, lakhs of votes were deleted through fake applications without any verification.”
He said Rahul Gandhi’s statement would reach more people because of Congress’s larger footprint and ecosystem, but stressed that Arvind Kejriwal and AAP had exposed this years ago. He cited another tweet by Arvind Kejriwal on 11th April 2019 quoting industry leader Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, whose mother’s vote had been deleted after living at the same address for 19 years. “Arvind Kejriwal then pointed out that reports were coming in from across India that voter deletions were happening at an unprecedented scale. Even in our December 2024 and January 2025 press conferences, we showed mass deletions, but the EC never investigated. This proves the EC was working in collusion with the government.”
