NEW DELHI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday escalated his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Election Commission of India (ECI), calling the much-touted “Gujarat Model” a “model of vote-chori (poll theft).”“It (‘vote chori’) was happening in Gujarat before 2014. They brought it to national level in 2014. Gujarat model is not an economic model, it is a model of stealing votes,” he said at a rally in Muzaffarpur in poll-bound Bihar.PM Modi’s electoral victories, Gandhi alleged, were built on “cutting votes and adding (fake) voters,” with the help of Union home minister Amit Shah and ECI.He reiterated his allegation that the assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra, as well as the Lok Sabha polls, were “stolen” in the BJP’s favour with the ECI’s “complicity.”“We did not say anything because we had no proof. But we found proof in Maharashtra because they overdid it there. The ECI added around 1 crore more votes in Maharashtra after the Lok Sabha elections. All of them went to the BJP. We will show you with proof how Haryana, Maharashtra and the Lok Sabha elections were stolen,” the Raebareli MP stated.Gandhi, who is on a state-wide “Voter Adhikar Yatra” ahead of the Bihar assembly polls, was joined by his ally and Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin, who echoed his charge against the poll panel.The 16-day march will culminate on September 1 with a mega rally at Patna’s historic Gandhi Maidan, expected to be attended by leaders of the Congress-led INDIA bloc.
