Politics
India’s Election Commission under fire from opposition
- Opposition, critics allege large-scale rigging impacting polls results.
- Election Commission of India denies charges — first ever in history.
- Rahul Gandhi demands ECI to release digital voter rolls for audit.
NEW DELHI: The Election Commission of India, long regarded as the impartial guardian of the world’s largest democracy, is facing unprecedented scrutiny over its credibility and independence.
Opposition leaders and critics have alleged that large-scale rigging of elections is impacting the overall results of the vote. The ECI has denied all charges, the first against it in India’s history.
Heading the charge is the leader of the opposition in New Delhi’s parliament, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party, who previously alleged that India’s electronic voting machines are flawed.
Now Gandhi has accused the ECI of refusing to share digital voter records, detailing what he said was a list of errors after his supporters spent weeks combing through vast piles of registration lists by hand.
Allegations
Gandhi, 55, said his party lost dozens of seats in the 2024 parliamentary elections because of vote rigging.
The largest democratic exercise in human history across the country of 1.4 billion people was staggered over six weeks.
Gandhi claimed that the ECI manipulated voter rolls to favour Prime Minister Narendra Modi´s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Modi, 74, won a historic third term last year but fell short of a majority.
The alleged rigging involved a string of tactics, according to Gandhi.
He said some people voted multiple times, citing bulk registrations from one dwelling and seemingly bogus addresses.
In a presentation to reporters on August 7, Gandhi pointed to a parliamentary constituency his party narrowly lost as an “open and shut” example of the alleged irregularities.
Over 100,000 “fake” votes were cast in the constituency, he said, courtesy of duplicate voters.
His Congress party lost the seat by just over 30,000 votes.
“Our demand from the ECI is clear — be transparent and release digital voter rolls so that people and parties can audit them,” Gandhi said.
ECI’s stance
The ECI has called Gandhi’s accusation “false and misleading”.
India’s chief election commissioner said they would “never” back down from their constitutional duties.
“Politics is being done using the Election Commission… as a tool to target India’s voters,” Gyanesh Kumar told a news conference this month.
“The Election Commission wants to make it clear that it fearlessly stands rock-solid with all voters […] without any discrimination and will continue to do so.”
Kumar also said those alleging fraud either need to furnish proof under oath or apologise.
“An affidavit must be submitted or an apology to the nation must be made — there is no third option.”
Why now?
Gandhi launched a month-long “voter rights” rally in the key battleground state of Bihar on August 17, receiving enthusiastic public response.
The allegations come ahead of elections in Bihar in October or November. The opposition alleged the ECI had embarked on a “mass disenfranchisement” exercise, after it gave voters in the state just weeks to prove their citizenship, requiring documents that few possess in a registration revamp.
India’s top court stepped in last week, allowing a biometric ID most residents possess to be accepted in Bihar’s voter registration.
The “Special Intensive Revision” (SIR) of voter registration is set to be replicated across India.
Gandhi called the exercise in Bihar the “final conspiracy”.
Activists have reported finding numerous living voters declared dead by election officials, and entire families struck off draft lists. Voter verification in Bihar is scheduled to be completed by September 25, with the final list released five days later.
“They aim to steal the elections by adding new voters under the guise of SIR and removing existing voters,” Gandhi said.
The ECI has defended the registration revision, saying it is in part to avoid “foreign illegal immigrants” from voting.
Members of Modi’s BJP have long claimed that large numbers of undocumented Muslim migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh have fraudulently entered India’s electoral rolls.
Criticism mounted after the ECI replaced Bihar’s machine-readable voter records with scanned image files that do not allow text searches.
Critics said the changes made detecting anomalies more time-consuming and prone to error.
- Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand witness large scale devastation.
- At least 176 people perish in Thailand and three in Malaysia.
- Indonesia’s death toll reaches 502 with 508 more still missing.
PALEMBAYAN: Rescue teams in western Indonesia were battling on Monday to clear roads cut off by cyclone-induced landslides and floods, as improved weather revealed more of the scale of a disaster that has killed close to 700 people in Southeast Asia.
Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have seen large scale devastation after a rare tropical storm formed in the Malacca Strait, fuelling torrential rains and wind gusts for a week that hampered efforts to reach people stranded by mudslides and high floodwaters.
At least 176 have been killed in Thailand and three in Malaysia, while the death toll climbed to 502 in Indonesia on Monday with 508 missing, according to official figures.
Under sunshine and clear blue skies in the town of Palembayan in Indonesia’s West Sumatra, hundreds of people were clearing mud, trees and wreckage from roads as some residents tried to salvage valuable items like documents and motorcycles from their damaged homes.
Men in camouflage outfits sifted through piles of mangled poles, concrete and sheet metal roofing as pickup trucks packed with people drove around looking for missing family members and handing out water to people, some trudging through knee-deep mud.
Months of adverse, deadly weather
The government’s recovery efforts include restoring roads, bridges and telecommunication services.
More than 28,000 homes have been damaged in Indonesia and 1.4 million people affected, according to the disaster agency.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto visited the three affected provinces on Monday and praised residents for their spirit in the face of what he called a catastrophe.
“There are roads that are still cut off, but we’re doing everything we can to overcome difficulties,” he said in North Sumatra.
“We face this disaster with resilience and solidarity. Our nation is strong right now, able to overcome this.”
The devastation in the three countries follows months of adverse and deadly weather in Southeast Asia, including typhoons that have lashed the Philippines and Vietnam and caused frequent and prolonged flooding elsewhere.
Scientists have warned that extreme weather events will become more frequent as a result of global warming.
Marooned for days
In Thailand, the death toll rose slightly to 176 on Monday from flooding in eight southern provinces that affected about three million people and led to a major mobilisation of its military to evacuate critical patients from hospitals and reach people marooned for days by floodwaters.
In the hardest-hit province of Songkhla, where 138 people were killed, the government said 85% of water services had been restored and would be fully operational by Wednesday.
Much of Thailand’s recovery effort is focused on the worst-affected city Hat Yai, a southern trading hub which on November 21 received 335 mm (13 inches) of rain, its highest single-day tally in 300 years, followed by days of unrelenting downpours.
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has set a timeline of seven days for residents to return to their homes, a government spokesperson said on Monday.
In neighbouring Malaysia, 11,600 people were still in evacuation centres, according to the country’s disaster agency, which said it was still on alert for a second and third wave of flooding.
- Ex-Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina, sister Rehana also sentenced.
- Case relates to illegal allocation of a plot of land: local media.
- Prosecutors highlight political influence, collusion abuse of power.
DHAKA: A Bangladesh court sentenced British parliamentarian and former minister Tulip Siddiq to two years in jail in a corruption case involving the alleged illegal allocation of a plot of land, local media reported.
The verdict was delivered in absentia as Siddiq, her aunt and former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and Hasina’s sister Sheikh Rehana — all co-accused in the case — were not present in court.
Hasina was sentenced to five years in jail and Rehana to seven, the local media reports said.
Hasina, who fled to neighbouring India in August 2024 at the height of an uprising against her government, was sentenced to death last month over her government’s violent crackdown on demonstrators during the protests.
Last week, she was handed a combined 21-year prison sentence in other corruption cases.
Prosecutors said that the land was unlawfully allocated through political influence and collusion with senior officials, accusing the three powerful defendants of abusing their authority to secure the plot, measuring roughly 13,610 square feet, during Hasina’s tenure as prime minister.
Most of the 17 accused were absent when the judgement was pronounced.
Siddiq, who resigned in January as the UK’s minister responsible for financial services and anti-corruption efforts following scrutiny over her financial ties to Hasina, has previously dismissed the allegations as a “politically motivated smear”.
Britain does not currently have an extradition treaty with Bangladesh.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said his partner, Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, is half-Indian and that one of their sons has the middle name “Sekhar” after Indian-American physicist and Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.
Speaking on Zerodha founder Nikhil Kamath’s “WTF is?” podcast, Musk said: “I’m not sure if you know this, but my partner Shivon is half Indian,” adding: “One of my sons with her, his middle name is Sekhar after Chandrasekhar.”
Musk also spoke about Zilis’s background when asked where she grew up, saying she was given up for adoption as a baby and raised in Canada. “She grew up in Canada. She was given up for adoption when she was a baby. I think her father was like an exchange student at the university or something like that… I’m not sure the exact details,” he said.
Zilis joined Musk’s AI company, Neuralink, in 2017 and is currently the Director of Operations and Special Projects. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Philosophy from Yale University. Zilis has four children with Musk — twins Strider and Azure, daughter Arcadia and son Seldon Lycurgus.
Earlier this year, in March, it emerged that Musk had another child, his 14th, with Zilis.
“Discussed with Elon and, in light of beautiful Arcadia’s birthday, we felt it was better to also just share directly about our wonderful and incredible son Seldon Lycurgus,” Zilis said in a post on X, without saying when the child was born. Musk responded with a heart.
Her announcement came two weeks after conservative influencer Ashley St Clair said that she also recently had a child with Musk.
Appearing on the latest episode of Kamath’s podcast, Musk also said that America has “been an immense beneficiary of talent from India, but that seems to be changing now”.
His comments come at a time when the American dream for thousands of Indians is turning sour due to rising US visa restrictions and policy unpredictability.
— With additional input from Reuters
What’s keeping drivers from buying EVs? Key reasons at a glance
U.S. Black Friday online sales hit record $11.8 billion, Adobe reports
What if Sun goes dark? Experts examine deadly reality behind upcoming sci-fi film
-
Sports1 week agoWATCH: Ronaldo scores spectacular bicycle kick
-
Entertainment1 week agoWelcome to Derry’ episode 5 delivers shocking twist
-
Politics1 week agoWashington and Kyiv Stress Any Peace Deal Must Fully Respect Ukraine’s Sovereignty
-
Business1 week agoKey economic data and trends that will shape Rachel Reeves’ Budget
-
Tech6 days agoWake Up—the Best Black Friday Mattress Sales Are Here
-
Politics1 week ago53,000 Sikhs vote in Ottawa Khalistan Referendum amid Carney-Modi trade talks scrutiny
-
Fashion1 week agoCanada’s Lululemon unveils team Canada kit for Milano Cortina 2026
-
Tech24 hours agoGet Your Steps In From Your Home Office With This Walking Pad—On Sale This Week