Your votes are being stolen, your citizenship is in danger: Rahul, Priyanka tell people of Bihar

Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Tuesday charged the ruling BJP at the Centre with "stealing" votes of the people who stood the risk of ''losing'' their "identity as a citizen of the country" and being deprived of all social welfare benefits.

Vadra, who has been in active politics for nearly half a decade, flew to Bihar for the first time to lend heft to her elder brother's state-wide "Voter Adhikar Yatra" taken out in protest against the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

The siblings, who were joined by INDIA bloc colleagues Tejashwi Yadav (RJD) and Dipankar Bhattacharya (CPI-ML Liberation), among others, covered Supaul and Madhubani districts, all strongholds of the ruling NDA, which includes Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U), on the first day of the third and last leg of the Yatra.

They winded up the day with a public meeting in Madhubani, where they addressed a large crowd from atop their open vehicle, with many bystanders switching on their mobile phones to make up for the lack of street lights.

Vadra made a brief address in which she said, "During the Lok Sabha polls last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi used to say that if voted to power, the Congress would steal buffaloes belonging to the common folk. We did not know then that he and his cohorts were involved in the theft of votes.'' The Congress general secretary alleged that ever since Modi has come to power, everything that belonged to the common people has been stolen by his government..

Public Sector Undertakings have been given over to his friends and now they are after voting rights of people, she said.

"But I would urge you all to be mindful of the importance of your right to vote. It entails your very identity as a citizen of this country. If you are stripped of that, you will lose everything. You will have no access to welfare schemes. If a calamity hits, you will not get insurance benefits. You will have no employment opportunities", said the Wayanad MP, who ended her speech with the slogan "Vote chor, gaddhi chhor".

Gandhi, who has been spearheading the yatra, said he was taken by surprise when Union Home Minister Amit Shah boasted a few years ago that he hoped the BJP will remain in power for 40-50 years.

"Now I realise that his confidence stemmed from the theft of votes his party has been indulging in with the help of the Election Commission," the former Congress president said.

Gandhi said he had been suspecting foul play for some time, but his worst fears were confirmed in the assembly polls to Maharashtra and Haryana last year, where the Congress was expected to win but the BJP got a landslide victory.

"The bungling in these two states was big enough to be conspicuous. When somebody steals 10 rupees from your wallet, you may not take note. But you can hardly be oblivious of when a thousand rupees are stolen," the Congress leader said.

The Raebareli MP said, "If they steal your votes, you will be left with nothing. The RSS, which is the BJP's parent body, will have full control over all resources of the country. You will stand deprived of your ration and even the ownership of your houses and land. However, the INDIA bloc is committed to fighting for your rights".

During the yatra, the youth of Bihar have made Modi, Shah and RSS fully aware of their energy and power, and now these people will think twice before stealing votes", he said.

Tejashwi Yadav, who is the INDIA bloc's de facto Chief Ministerial candidate, urged the people to vote in the name of "Lalu ji (his father and RJD president) and Rahul ji" and defeat the BJP-led coalition which was being opposed by "ideological descendants of Jawharlal Nehru, Babasaheb Ambedkar and Karpoori Thakur".

Notably, the public meeting at Madhubani was preceded by a rally at Phulparas, the assembly segment which had elected Thakur, a Bharat Ratna awardee, in 1977 when he became the chief minister and introduced reservations for backward classes for the first time.

Yadav promised that if he formed the next government, he would try to restore enhanced quotas for the deprived castes, and berated his ex-boss Nitish Kumar by accusing him of failure to protect the reservation laws brought in 2023 by getting these placed in the ninth Schedule of the Constitution.

"Our reservation laws could have been protected against judicial intervention just like in Tamil Nadu. But Nitish Kumar is no longer able to govern Bihar. He has been hijacked by the BJP, which is running the show", alleged the former Deputy CM.

Kumar, who had helped form the INDIA bloc, returned to the NDA ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)