Public has woken up: Rahul Gandhi shares new video highlighting vote theft

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Aug 16, 2025: Alluding to Bollywood movies, the Congress stepped up its campaign against alleged "vote theft" on Saturday by releasing a new video titled "laapata vote" to highlight the claim.

Posting the video on X, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said, "’Chori chori, chupke chupke’ no more, the public has woken up." His party posted the video on its official social media account and said the "theft of your vote is theft of rights".

"Let’s raise our voice against vote theft together and save our rights," the party said.

चोरी चोरी, चुपके चुपके…
अब और नहीं, जनता जाग गई है।#StopVoteChori pic.twitter.com/7mrheHSMh3

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 16, 2025

In the video, a man is seen pleading in the police station that his "vote has been stolen" and tells the officials there that "lakhs of votes are being stolen", leaving the police personnel wondering if their vote has also been "stolen".

The minute-long video is titled ’laapata vote’ with ’ladies’ cut out from between, a reference to the Kiran Rao-directed movie ’Laapata Ladies’.

The Congress released a video depicting how fake votes were being cast on Wednesday, too. Gandhi had shared that minute-long video and said, "Aapke vote ki chori aapke adhikar ki chori, aapki pehchaan ki chori hai (Theft of your vote is theft of your rights, theft of your identity)." That video depicts a family entering a polling booth with two people telling them that their votes have already been cast, and it ends with the two persons casting fake votes, showing a thumbs up to an officer sitting at the table with an ’election chori aayog’ display plate on his table.

The Congress has claimed that "vote chori" was a "do-or-die" issue for it, and announced a roadmap to take its allegations to the people through various activities.

The opposition party has also launched a web portal for people to register and demand accountability from the poll panel against what it called "vote chori", and express support for the demand for digital voter rolls.