Punjab Congress collects over 26 lakh signatures against 'vote chori'

The Punjab Congress on Saturday dispatched over 26 lakh signed forms collected under its 'Vote Chor, Gaddi Chhod' (vote thieves, quit power) campaign to the party headquarters in Delhi.

The truck carrying 26,30,845 forms was flagged off by senior state party leaders, including Ravinder Dalvi, Vijay Inder Singla, Randeep Nabha, Pargat Singh and Kuljit Nagra in Chandigarh.

Under the campaign, the Congress plans to collect 5 crore signatures and submit them to the Election Commission of India. The campaign in Punjab was launched over a month ago under the leadership of state Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring.

According to Congress leaders, the drive ''against the BJP government's vote theft in connivance with the Election Commission'' received an overwhelming response from party cadres in Punjab.

The response was far beyond their targets and expectations, they added.

''Thanks to Rahul Gandhi exposing the government and the Election Commission, every Indian is now aware of how the BJP is manipulating elections through fake and bogus votes and also deleting the names of those it suspects won't vote for the BJP,'' a Congress leader said. Senior leader and All India Congress Committee joint treasurer Vijay Inder Singla alleged that a significantly high number of votes were added within six months in Maharashtra, completely reversing the election results between the Lok Sabha and assembly polls. Singla said Rahul Gandhi's recent ''revelations'' about Haryana assembly elections has ''completely exposed'' the BJP and it was left ''defenceless and dumbfounded''.

He pointed out that the BJP and the Election Commission have not come forward with a convincing answer or explanation to it.

The current signature campaign has helped create awareness among people against a possible ''vote theft and manipulation'' in Punjab, Singla said.

He announced that the signature campaign will be followed up by awareness campaigns to ensure that no bogus voter is allowed to be included and no genuine voter is deleted from the state's electoral rolls.