Patna, September 3: The Congress party’s Voter Adhikar Yatra ended in Patna on Monday with Rahul Gandhi warning Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to brace for a “hydrogen bomb” of revelations on alleged voter fraud, while opposition allies rallied around him to accuse the ruling coalition of undermining democracy.
The 14-day, 1,300-km march, launched on Aug. 17 from Sasaram, covered 110 assembly constituencies in 25 districts of Bihar before culminating in a “Gandhi se Ambedkar” procession from Patna’s Gandhi Maidan. Leaders of the opposition INDIA alliance including Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Tejashwi Yadav and others joined the rally, which was stopped by police at Dak Bungalow crossing.
“In the coming time, I am guaranteeing you that after the hydrogen bomb (comes), Narendra Modi ji will not be able to show his face to the country,” Gandhi, the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha, told the crowd.
He cited examples from Karnataka’s Mahadevapura constituency, where he said one lakh fake voters were detected, and from Maharashtra, where he alleged one crore names were fraudulently added between Lok Sabha and state polls. Gandhi accused the Election Commission of colluding with the BJP and said vote theft was equivalent to “the theft of rights, reservation, democracy, employment, education and the youth’s future.”
On social media, Gandhi pledged “not a single vote will be stolen in Bihar” and accused the BJP of working to benefit billionaire industrialists Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani.
BJP leaders dismissed Gandhi’s remarks. “Whenever I listen to Rahul Gandhi, inside or outside Parliament, it takes time to understand what he is trying to say,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, a BJP MP from Patna. “How are the atom bomb and the hydrogen bomb related to elections? He is being irresponsible.”
Other INDIA bloc leaders used the rally to sharpen attacks on the BJP and its allies. Tejashwi Yadav called Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar the “Bhishma Pitamaha of corruption” and accused the ruling coalition of deleting names from voter lists while adding fake ones. Hemant Soren said the fight was about safeguarding the Constitution, alleging he had been jailed during the Lok Sabha polls to weaken his party.
Congress president Kharge predicted the fall of the “double-engine government” within six months and promised a future administration representing Dalits, women and the poor. Senior party figures including Randeep Surjewala and Ashok Gehlot framed the march as a historic fight to protect voting rights.
The Voter Adhikar Yatra, held against the backdrop of the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, was seen by opposition leaders as both a campaign against alleged manipulation of voter lists and a show of strength ahead of Bihar’s upcoming assembly elections.
