After the “Atom Bomb” press conference in Bengaluru, Rahul Gandhi’s “Operation Sarkar Chori” in Haryana has shattered public trust in India’s Election Commission under Modi.
“Ultimately, the strength of a democracy is not in its laws but in the honesty of those who implement them.”
— Jawaharlal Nehru, Lok Sabha, 1951
By Onkareshwar Pandey
No matter how fervently Prime Minister Narendra Modi may wish to erase Nehru’s legacy, he cannot escape this truth. The moral line Nehru drew for India’s institutions still stands—untouched, unapproached. Today, that line divides a nation that once trusted its democratic machinery from one that now watches it crumble, beginning with the Election Commission of India (ECI).
On 5 November 2025, Rahul Gandhi walked onto the stage with a thick dossier titled the H-Files. The atmosphere was electric. Cameras flashed, reporters leaned forward, and the Congress leader began—not with rhetoric, but with data. This was his second major exposé on electoral irregularities, following his earlier “Atom Bomb” press conference in Bengaluru. This time, the target was Haryana.
The Hydrogen Bomb: Haryana and the Collapse of Electoral Credibility
In a live bilingual press conference, Gandhi unveiled “Operation Sarkar Chori”, alleging a democratic heist in Haryana. He claimed 25 lakh votes were manipulated to favour the BJP, presenting the H-Files—a dossier detailing:
- 1.7 lakh duplicate voters (same names, fathers’ names, and ages)
- 4.4 lakh voters with faulty addresses
- 7.5 lakh voters linked to a single invalid phone number
- Alarming irregularities in postal ballots and house-based registrations
“This is not a party issue,” Gandhi declared. “This is about the theft of people’s right to choose—about Loktantra ki chori. India’s democracy is dead.”
Within hours, hashtags like #HFiles and #SarkarChori began trending nationwide.
The Brazilian Model
Gandhi termed it a “Hydrogen Bomb on democracy”, accusing the BJP of deploying a “Brazilian Model” of voter roll fraud—not EVM hacking, but a sophisticated manipulation that “adds ghosts and deletes citizens.” He cited examples of voters like “Sweety” and “Saraswati” allegedly appearing over 200 times in rolls across constituencies.
The BJP dismissed the allegations as “a bundle of lies,” while the ECI issued its standard response: “baseless and irresponsible.” But Gandhi’s counter was sharp:
“If it’s baseless, then prove it—make the electoral rolls public in machine-readable form. What are you hiding?”
That unanswered question now symbolizes the crisis of transparency that has turned the world’s largest democracy into one of its most doubted.
The Atom Bomb: Bengaluru and the 2024 Lok Sabha Exposé
Before Haryana, there was Karnataka. On 7 August 2025, Gandhi dropped what he called an “Atom Bomb on our democracy”, presenting data from Bengaluru Central during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. He alleged mass deletion of genuine voters and insertion of fake ones, citing turnout anomalies and suppressed data.
Independent investigations by The Reporters’ Collective and journalist Ajit Anjum later substantiated irregularities in voter lists across Bengaluru and Mysuru. The BJP again called it “desperation from defeat,” while the ECI repeated its template: “voter roll cleaning is routine.” Yet, none of Gandhi’s data points were disproved with evidence.
Bihar’s SIR and the Voters’ Adhikar Yatra
In Bihar, where assembly elections are underway, Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav took the battle from data sheets to dusty roads. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) drive by the ECI claimed to remove “foreign nationals” and “duplicate entries.” But the numbers told a different story:
- Only 11,484 names flagged as “untraceable”
- No evidence of Bangladeshi or Nepali voters
- Yet, lakhs of genuine voters, mostly poor and marginalized, found their names missing
- Even the flagged names were not handed to police for deportation
The Voters’ Adhikar Yatra, joined by leaders like Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav, M.K. Stalin, Uddhav Thackeray, and Sharad Pawar, became a mass movement for voter justice. Gandhi sat for tea with elderly villagers whose names were deleted, saying:
“These are not errors; these are erased citizens.”
Activist Yogendra Yadav later presented live “dead voters” in the Supreme Court, exposing the chaos of the SIR process. Even after revisions, serious errors persisted—what Gandhi called a “deliberate design to sterilize democracy.”
The Wall of Opacity: “It Will Take 272 Years”
The rot runs deeper than fraud—it reeks of institutional contempt. When activists filed RTIs seeking counting-day CCTV footage from the 2019 general elections, the ECI replied:
“It would take 272 years to compile the data.”
— The Wire Hindi
This absurdity became a national metaphor for bureaucratic mockery. Legal activist Adv. Mehmood Pracha later forced the ECI to admit in court that it had changed its policy to provide electoral records only in non-searchable PDFs, making independent audits impossible.
“Opacity is not a technical glitch; it’s a political strategy.” — Mehmood Pracha
In sum, Rahul Gandhi’s exposés—from Bengaluru to Haryana to Bihar—have not just challenged the BJP’s electoral conduct but exposed a systemic erosion of democratic integrity. The watchdog is captured. The trust is broken. And the struggle to save democracy is no longer rhetorical—it is existential.