With nearly one billion eligible voters, India conducts elections of staggering scale. Known as the world’s largest democracy, India’s ritual of mass participation has long been celebrated as evidence of its resilience as a sovereign, secular republic, where the ballot box guarantees the people’s voice.
But today that image is under unprecedented strain. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has made a series of accusations against India’s Election Commission in relation to systematic vote chori, or vote theft. He claims that these are not just technical glitches or clerical errors, but a deliberate attempt to manipulate voter rolls across multiple states.
