Former Uttarakhand Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Harish Rawat on Friday reacted to a notice issued by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), stating that such summons have become routine before elections to harass opposition leaders.
Rawat said he would respect the CBI’s summons but requested that the agency allow him time until mid-October for a physical appearance. “When elections are near, such notices come, so I welcome the notice. I will respect your summons and appear before you,” he told ANI.
The senior Congress leader also echoed Rahul Gandhi’s recent charge of “vote theft,” accusing the Election Commission of behaving like a political party by refusing to investigate the issue.
“Rahul Gandhi has revealed a harsh truth that we’ve all sensed in the last few elections,” Rawat said, alleging large-scale voter deletions from specific communities and unverifiable additions of names with single-line addresses. “Instead of probing these serious concerns, the Election Commission is dismissing them and avoiding answers,” he added.
His remarks follow Rahul Gandhi’s claim of an attempt to delete over 6,000 voters’ names in Karnataka’s Aland constituency.
The Election Commission, however, refuted the allegations, clarifying that no wrongful deletions had occurred and reiterating that no voter can be removed from the rolls without prior notice.
