EC couldn’t answer Rahul’squeries, says Jitendra Awhad

NCP (SP) leader Jitendra Awhad alleged on Sunday that the Election Commission has failed to respond to queries raised by opposition leader Rahul Gandhi regarding vote fraud.
He claimed that the 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections were managed and that the Mahayuti alliance won by stealing votes.
“How could 76 lakh votes increase (in the last hour of polling) in Maharashtra? I reiterate that the assembly elections were managed. This government came to power by stealing votes,” Awhad said while addressing a press conference in Akola.
He said the Election Commission couldn’t answer queries raised by Rahul Gandhi.
“How could they respond? The same EC approves parties of defectors. They won’t accept allegations,” Awhad said in a veiled reference to the recognition granted to breakaway factions of the Shiv Sena and NCP by the poll body in the past. Rahul Gandhi had raised allegations of “vote chori” and cited data from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to claim that over 1 lakh votes were “stolen” in the Mahadevapura assembly segment in Karnataka through five types of manipulation. He had also alleged similar irregularities in other states.
Meanwhile, responding to a query, Awhad alleged that V D Savarkar had supported the two-nation theory.
“The proponent of this theory was V D Savarkar, not Mahatma Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru,” he claimed.
The NCP (SP) leader stressed the subjective freedom to choose veg or non-veg food after some civic bodies banned the sale of meat on Independence Day.
“The history of food culture in India gives freedom to people to decide. Those who cooperated with the British wouldn’t understand the history,” he said.
Earlier, the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Sunday pushed back against allegations of irregularities in electoral rolls, with Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar asserting that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar was being conducted in a transparent and legally mandated manner.
Addressing a press conference at the National Media Centre in New Delhi—its first media interaction since the launch of the SIR in Bihar—Kumar stressed that the credibility of the voter list and the poll body stood intact. The briefing also came in the wake of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s recent charge of “vote theft.” “All political parties are born through registration with the Election Commission. Then how can the Election Commission discriminate among them? For the Commission, all are equal… No matter which party one belongs to, we will not step back from our constitutional duty,” Kumar said.