Akhilesh Yadav Accuses Election Commission of Colluding With BJP

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav accused the Election Commission of India and the Bharatiya Janata Party of collaborating to engage in vote theft and electoral irregularities. During a press conference in Lucknow on September 27, Yadav alleged that government officials deliberately deleted the votes of Samajwadi Party supporters during the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly elections to prevent his party from forming a government.

Yadav claimed the Election Commission ignored repeated complaints regarding arbitrary official postings and deleted voter names during the Rampur by-election and other polls in Uttar Pradesh. He further alleged that fake votes were being created in Noida and called for judicial intervention to order fresh elections in Bihar and West Bengal. He contrasted these events with the 2017 elections, stating his party had mistakenly trusted the commission's impartiality at that time.

The Election Commission of India rejected claims of institutional dissent following reports that Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had raised objections regarding the voter deletion process. The commission maintained that all final decisions were unanimous and that internal queries were standard administrative procedures. Yadav also criticized the BJP for neglecting the poor and failing to address urban drainage issues in cities including Varanasi and Lucknow, predicting the ruling party's defeat in the 2027 assembly polls.