'Vote theft' a pan-India issue, not just restricted to Bihar, Odisha: Congress MLA Sofia Firdous

Bhubaneswar (Odisha) [India], September 15 (ANI): Calling "Vote theft" a pan-India issue, Congress MLA Sofia Firdous said that citizens in the country are worried about the ongoing "electoral malpractices".
Speaking to ANI on Sunday, Firdous said, "Vote Chori is not just Odisha or Bihar's issue. It is a matter of concern for the entire of India. Every citizen everywhere thinks that some malpractice is taking place. This would be exposed even more going further."
In the past months, the opposition parties have intensified their attacks on the BJP and the Election Commission of India. The Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, has called for "Vote chor, Gaddi chhor". He recently carried out a Voter Adhikar Yatra in Bihar, where prominent leaders of the INDIA bloc, including DMK supremo and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, shared the stage with the Congress MP.
The rally spanned across 25 districts, including Aurangabad, Gayaji, Siwan, and others. The INDIA bloc leaders visited around 110 assembly constituencies in the poll-bound state, covered over 1,300 kilometres, and saw the presence of multiple leaders.
Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge also slammed the Election Commission of India, questioning whether the poll body has become "BJP's back-office" for vote theft.
The controversy around "vote theft" took centre stage when Rahul Gandhi had, on August 7, addressed a press conference, in which he presented Congress's research on voting in the Mahadevapura Assembly in Karnataka, a part of the Bangalore Central parliamentary constituency. Gandhi alleged "vote chori" (vote theft) of 1,00,250 votes, including duplicate voters, invalid addresses, and bulk registrations of votes at single locations.
Later, responding to the charges, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on August 17 said neither the ECI nor the voters are "afraid" of such "false" allegations.
CEC affirmed that the Election Commission "stood like a rock" with every section of society without any discrimination. (ANI)