Vote theft taking place for 10 years, ECI should have conducted probe: Raj Thackeray

Pune, Aug 23 (PTI) MNS president Raj Thackeray on Saturday said he had been talking about `vote theft' since 2016, and the Election Commission should have conducted a probe when both Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and the BJP's Anurag Thakur alleged voter list frauds.

Speaking to the local office-bearers of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena here ahead of municipal elections, he asked party workers to scrutinise voter lists carefully.

Referring to the allegations of manipulation of voter lists by Rahul Gandhi and Anurag Thakur, Thackeray said, "When members from Opposition as well as the government are raising doubts, the ECI should have investigated them, but it prefers to suppress the matter. The ECI will not do it, as it fears that the vote theft of the last 10 years will be exposed.

"They have managed to form the government by stealing votes all these years," he said, without specifying which political party he was talking about.

"Our candidates got defeated not because they did not get votes, but because the votes cast for them never reached them....Therefore, if we want success, we will have to expose their vote theft. Every party worker needs to scrutinise voter lists carefully," he said.

The MNS could not win a single seat in the 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections.

While the INDIA bloc is accusing the government of vote theft ahead of the Bihar assembly polls, he has been raising the issue for the past nine years, Raj Thackeray said.

"Vote theft has been taking place for the last ten years. I have been speaking about it since 2016. I also met Sharad Pawar, Sonia Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee and other opposition members. In 2017, I had suggested boycotting the polls," he said. PTI COR KRK