Congress leader Rahul Gandhiescalated his accusations of “vote chori” against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission, claiming that 25 lakh fake votes were recorded in the 2024 Haryana assembly elections. Speaking at a press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday, November 5, Gandhi alleged that systemic manipulation turned a Congress win into a defeat.
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“Haryana has 2 crore voters, and 25 lakh of them are fake,” he said, presenting what he described as “100 percent proof” of large-scale irregularities. Gandhi added that 5.21 lakh duplicate voter entries were discovered, with some entries reportedly using the same photograph under different names.
[img=1px,1px]https://data.indianexpress.com/election2019/track_1x1.jpg[/img]Duplicate Identities Highlighted in Presentation
During the presentation, Gandhi displayed a photograph of a woman allegedly appearing multiple times in Haryana’s voter rolls under names such as Seema, Sweety, and Saraswati, purportedly casting votes 22 times. “This image shows how identities have been duplicated to inflate vote counts,” he said.
VIDEO | Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, addressing a press conference, says, "Who is this lady? What is her name? Where does she come from? But she votes 22 times in Haryana, at 10 different booths, and has multiple names: Seema, Sweety, Saraswati, Rashmi, Vilma… But turns out… pic.twitter.com/aQatIdxQNY
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) November 5, 2025 Details about the model
Rahul Gandhi also displayed a QR code. After scanning the QR code, the search lead us to a stock image. Investigations revealed that the photograph is of a Brazilian model, uploaded on March 2, 2017, to the free stock image platform Unsplash by professional photographer Matheus Ferrero. The image, titled woman wearing blue denim jacket, has been viewed over 59 million times and downloaded more than 4 lakh times under the Unsplash license, allowing free public use. There is no suggestion of any involvement by the model or photographer in the voter duplication claims.
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As of now, neither the Election Commission nor the BJP has formally responded to Gandhi’s allegations, raising broader questions about electoral transparency and the potential misuse of digital data in voter management systems.
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