A sudden surge of Form 7 deletion requests targeting Muslim, SC, ST, and OBC voters in Belagavi, Karnataka has put the Election Commission in the crosshairs of a fresh political firestorm — and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is demanding arrests, resignations, and a criminal investigation, all in one breath.

The Belagavi Flash-Point: 15,000 Names, Three Days

Gandhi's post, shared on October 1, 2026, zeroes in on a specific and startling claim: in just three days — September 22, 23, and 24 — a flood of Form 7 applications were filed in Belagavi to remove lagbhag 15 hazaar (approximately 15,000) voters from the electoral rolls. Form 7 is the official mechanism under Indian electoral rules by which a voter's name can be objected to and potentially struck off the register. The Congress leader alleges that the targeted voters belong overwhelmingly to communities that tend to vote against the BJP — specifically Muslims, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes.

Gandhi frames this not as a local administrative irregularity but as a piece of a larger, centralised operation. He contends that BJP functionaries and Election Commission officials together use automated software to bulk-file Form 7 objections, causing lakhs of voters to 'disappear' from rolls without individual scrutiny. 'This is how votes are stolen,' he says — controlled from the top, executed through software, targeted at the politically inconvenient.

FIR Demand at Karnataka CEO's Office — and an Alleged Refusal

Karnataka Congress leaders, Gandhi says, marched to the office of Karnataka's Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) on the same day, demanding an FIR against those responsible for the alleged mass deletion plot. His pointed question: why is the CEO refusing to register the complaint? That refusal, in Gandhi's telling, is itself evidence of institutional complicity.

The accusation reaches all the way to the top. Gandhi names Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar — alleging that the trio is using the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process of electoral rolls to hollow out Indian democracy. He calls it deshdroh — treason.

Gandhi's Call: Gyanesh Kumar Should Resign and Turn Approver

The sharpest demand in the post is directed at Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Gandhi calls on him to resign and become an 'approver' — a legal term in Indian criminal procedure for an accused who cooperates with investigators in exchange for leniency — so that a full probe can be launched against Modi and Shah. It is an extraordinary ask: Gandhi is essentially urging the country's top election official to testify against the ruling government as a state witness.

The Congress leader notes that he had previously 'exposed' this method of centralised voter deletion — a reference to his prior public campaigns on what he has called 'vote theft' — framing the Belagavi episode as confirmation of a pattern he has been documenting.

With assembly elections perpetually on India's calendar and electoral-roll integrity already a charged national conversation, the Belagavi allegations — if substantiated — could reshape the legal and political contest around who controls the voter list, and who decides who gets to vote.