Rahul Gandhi's Latest 'Vote Chor' Charge Draws Blood; Three Recent Vignettes from Sanatan Politics; US Targets Indian-run Port in Iran

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

---

If you are already a paid subscriber, thank you! And be sure to renew your subscription when it expires.

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content.

To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the following link - https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable

Please give us at least up to 2 business days to activate/upgrade/renew your subscription
These are one-time payments and there will be no auto-renewal

---

Snapshot of the day

September 18, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

Leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Thursday accused chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of “protecting vote chor (thieves)” as he alleged that about 6,018 votes in Karnataka’s Aland constituency were deleted by unknown individuals impersonating voters, using mobile numbers outside the state, through a software to systematically target booths where the Congress was winning. Gandhi said that software was employed to use those voters who were numbered serial number 1 in their booths, to file applications for deletions. Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Gandhi said that an FIR had been filed in February 2023, following which the Karnataka CID had written 18 letters in 18 months to the Election Commission, the CEO (chief electoral officer) of Karnataka too had raised the matter with the Election Commission of India but received no response. He added:

“Now this is absolutely solid proof that Gyanesh Kumar is protecting the people who are doing this. This is also absolutely solid proof that I’ve shown you that this is being done in a centralised way, this is being done at scale, and this is being done using large resources.”

The Election Commission of India responded moments after the press conference with a post on X to say that his allegations are “incorrect and baseless”, while admitting that an FIR was filed in 2023 “after certain unsuccessful attempts were made for deletion of electors” in Aland.

To summarise the relevant part of the brief official response, the ECI insists that it shared information with the Kalaburgi superintendent of police, including the “Objector's details, Form Reference Number, name of the Objector, his EPIC number and mobile number used for log-in and mobile number provided by the Objector for processing, software application medium, IP address, applicant place, Form submission date and time, and user creation date.”

So is this yet another case of ‘he said, she said’ or is one side not giving the full picture? Journalist Arvind Gunasekar raises a number of questions the ECI has not answered:

• If ECI itself has registered the FIR, why isn’t the poll body cooperating with the investigation?

• Why is the ECI not providing the ‘Destination IP Addresses’ as recorded in the servers of the poll body to Karnataka Police?

• Why is the ECI not providing ‘Device Destination Ports’ as recorded in the servers of the poll body to Karnataka Police?

• Why is the ECI not providing ‘OTP Trails’ to the Karnataka Police?

In a subsequent post on X, Gandhi went on to allege that the CID investigation has been “blocked” by CEC Kumar. “After our Aland candidate exposed the fraud, the local EC official filed an FIR, but the CID investigation has been – BLOCKED by CEC.

The establishment media has predictably chosen to miss the woods for the trees – focusing on the fact that the voters were eventually not deleted from the rolls and that the Congress went on to win the seat rather handsomely. What they chose to ignore, as have the ECI and the BJP (which has also trashed Gandhi’s claims), is the fact that an as-yet unidentified entity did indeed make use of automated software in an attempt to tamper with the electoral rolls. Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta notes that the ECI’s own note tonight confirms that such an attempt was made. Yet, despite the fact that industrial level tampering “can shake the very foundations of Indian democracy”, the ECI preferred to wheel out a “knee-jerk response” to Gandhi instead of promising to pursue a proper probe.

And that only goes to reinforce Gandhi’s claim that the Election Commission