The 2024 Lok Sabha election was 'illegal' — that is the explosive charge Congress leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi has now levelled, and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra amplified on X on Sunday, November 1, 2026, citing a staggering figure: 13.5 crore voters allegedly deleted from electoral rolls after the polls concluded.

Priyanka's post quotes Rahul Gandhi directly: 'इस देश में कई साल से वोट चोरी हो रही है' — 'vote theft has been happening in this country for several years.' The charge is not new in its framing, but the arithmetic Rahul attaches to it is pointed. He names West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and the 2024 general election as contests where, he alleges, 'vote theft' occurred.

The 15% figure — and why it matters to the opposition

The core of Rahul Gandhi's argument rests on a specific claim: after the 2024 Lok Sabha election, names of 13.5 crore voters — equal to 15% of the total electorate, or roughly one in every seven voters — were removed from the electoral roll. He then places that figure against the electoral margin: the NDA and the INDIA bloc were separated by just 3% in vote share in the general election. The implicit logic is stark — a 15% post-poll deletion dwarfs the 3% gap that determined who governed.

It is important to note that the specific figure of 13.5 crore deletions and the 15% claim have not been independently verified, and the Election Commission of India has not, as of this report, issued a response to this particular set of numbers. Electoral rolls are routinely revised during special summary revisions — a process that can involve both additions and deletions for reasons including death, migration, and duplicate entries.

A long-running opposition grievance reaches a new pitch

Congress and allied opposition parties have questioned the integrity of electoral rolls with increasing regularity since 2019. The concerns have spanned debates over EVM-VVPAT verification, special summary revisions in states that subsequently flipped politically, and the pace and transparency of roll updates. What distinguishes Rahul Gandhi's current statement is the direct leap to calling the 2024 election itself 'illegal' — language that, if pursued formally, would imply a judicial or parliamentary challenge.

The NDA secured a third consecutive term under Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2024, though with a reduced majority that made the INDIA bloc's performance the most closely watched opposition result in a decade. That narrow margin has kept electoral integrity arguments alive in opposition discourse well beyond election season.

What a formal challenge would require

Alleging an election is 'illegal' carries significant legal weight in India. A formal challenge to a general election result can be filed as an election petition before the relevant High Court, or constitutional questions can be raised before the Supreme Court. Any such move would require the opposition to substantiate the voter-deletion figures with documentary evidence from the Election Commission's own published data. The political pressure, however, can build independently of the courtroom — and that pressure appears to be exactly what this statement is designed to generate.

With Rahul Gandhi now holding the formal position of Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, statements of this magnitude carry institutional weight they would not have had from the backbench. Whether this escalates into a formal legal or parliamentary challenge — or remains a powerful line of attack — is the question that now hangs over New Delhi.