Whether it is an EVM or a ballot paper, Union Minister Pralhad Joshi says the verdict stays the same — and Congress has zero seats to show for either. Posting in Kannada on Wednesday, 28 October 2026, the senior BJP leader from Karnataka delivered a pointed broadside at the Congress party following its shutout across 28 MLC constituencies held nationwide, including the loss of a seat the party had previously held in its own governed state of Karnataka.

Translated from Kannada, Joshi wrote: 'Whether EVMs are used or ballot papers — the result is only one. Congress has been completely wiped out, unable to win even a single seat among the 28 MLC constituencies held across the country. A party that constantly fabricates the false story of 'vote theft' and questions the constitutional institutions of democracy has failed to win even one seat. Even in Karnataka, where it is in power, it has lost a seat it already held. Congress keeps talking about EVMs. But even when elections are conducted with ballot papers, the result has not changed. Blaming the system every time election results come is Congress's habit. But the people's mandate is clear. Let Rahul Gandhi and the Congress leadership, instead of levelling accusations at the system, now introspect about their string of defeats.'

The EVM argument Congress can no longer hide behind

The MLC results hand Joshi a tactically sharp point. Legislative Council elections in India are conducted through a mix of methods — some seats through direct votes, others through elected representative colleges — and crucially, some constituencies use ballot papers rather than electronic voting machines. Joshi's argument is calibrated: if EVM manipulation were the true explanation for Congress's losses, ballot-paper contests should have told a different story. They did not.

Congress and allied opposition parties have filed multiple petitions challenging EVM integrity in the Supreme Court since 2014, a cycle that intensified after every major loss. The Election Commission of India has consistently maintained in official statements and affidavits from 2017 onward that its machines are tamper-proof. Still, the EVM narrative has remained a live political instrument for the opposition — one that Joshi is now using as a mirror.

Karnataka: A Congress stronghold that could not hold its own seat

The sharpest detail in Joshi's post is the Karnataka reference. Congress governs Karnataka, giving it significant institutional leverage — yet it could not defend an MLC seat it already held in the state. For a BJP leader from the state who watched Congress wrest it back in the 2023 assembly election, the irony is loud and deliberate. Losing a sitting member's seat in your own backyard, with the full machinery of incumbency, makes the EVM alibi even harder to sustain.

Joshi addresses Rahul Gandhi by name, calling on him and the Congress leadership to move past systemic blame and undertake 'introspection about their string of defeats' — saallu saalu solalugannu ātmāvalōkana maḍikoḷḷali (introspect on consecutive defeats). It is a demand the BJP has pressed with increasing frequency as the opposition's electoral footprint has continued to contract.

A pattern the mandate keeps confirming

India's EVM debate is not new, but its political geometry is shifting. Parties that once amplified the tampering narrative have found it progressively difficult to sustain as losses accumulate across states, methods, and margins. The 28-seat MLC sweep — particularly the Karnataka result — gives the BJP a fresh data point in a recurring argument: that voters, not machines, are delivering these verdicts.

The challenge for Congress now is not just rebutting Joshi's point — it is answering it with a credible counter-narrative before the next round of state elections. An introspection that stops at the EVM is, at this pace, no introspection at all.