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A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Over to Sidharth Bhatia for today’s Cable

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Snapshot of the day

August 18, 2025

Sidharth Bhatia

The standoff between the Election Commission and the opposition was writ large on the former's press conference yesterday afternoon, which also happened to be chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar's maiden presser. The poll body chief took aim at Lok Sabha leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi – who has been alleging collusion between the EC and the BJP in ‘stealing votes’ – and insisted that he either submit his allegations under oath or ‘apologise to the nation’ for making ‘baseless allegations’. Of accusations pertaining to the SIR, Kumar claimed that parties' booth-level agents had “received and formally attested” the draft voter rolls; against this backdrop, allegations of vote theft “only means that either the voices of district leaders of political parties are not being properly conveyed to their national leaders, or there is a deliberate attempt to create confusion among voters”, he said.

He denied bias against any particular party, saying that for the commission “there are no ruling parties or opposition; all are equal”.

Kumar fielded many questions during the presser and provided many non-answers or unconvincing answers in return. For instance, the CEC maintained that Gandhi must offer evidence for voter fraud under oath, but dissembled when asked about similar allegations by BJP MP Anurag Thakur; said that