The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday launched a counterattack against Congress over allegations of electoral malpractice, questioning the timing of former party president Sonia Gandhi’s inclusion in the voter list and accusing opposition leaders of benefiting from irregularities in voter rolls.Addressing a press conference, Union Minister Anurag Thakur alleged that some Congress and opposition leaders won elections with the help of “ghuspaithi” (infiltrator) voters. He accused the Congress of opposing the Election Commission’s ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar to protect its “vote bank” and criticised what he described as “appeasement politics.”Thakur cited alleged cases of duplicate voters, fake addresses, manipulated ages, and mass voting in constituencies such as Raebareli, represented by Rahul Gandhi; Diamond Harbour, represented by Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee; and Kannauj, represented by Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.Separately, BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya had also earlier made the claim that Sonia Gandhi’s name was added to the electoral rolls in 1980, three years before she became an Indian citizen, while she still held Italian citizenship. He said her name appeared in the rolls of the New Delhi parliamentary constituency at 1, Safdarjung Road, then the official residence of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi , alongside other members of the Gandhi family.Malviya alleged that the entry violated electoral laws, which require Indian citizenship for voter registration, and that her name was deleted in 1982 before reappearing in 1983. “If this isn’t blatant electoral malpractice, what is?” he wrote on social media platform X.
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