Rahul Gandhi backs Mamata over BJP ‘stealing’ more than 100 seats, Sibal says EC defeated TMC
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The defeat of the Trinamool Congress in the West Bengal Assembly elections, and the subsequent reaction from its supremo linking the BJP’s victory to alleged fraudulence in connivance with the Election Commission, have led Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to support Mamata Banerjee, who backed the allegation that the BJP had stolen votes in more than a hundred seats in the state, while linking a similar pattern to Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, and Maharashtra.
Rahul Gandhi, articulating his position through a sharply worded social media intervention, contended that both Assam and West Bengal represented “clear cases” of electoral subversion, alleging that the Election Commission’s complicity had enabled what he described as a systematic expropriation of the democratic mandate, while reiterating his concurrence with Banerjee’s assertion that the scale of irregularities had decisively altered the electoral arithmetic.
He said that similar patterns in the process through which the BJP ensures its victory, which he termed a “playbook”, had been operationalised in multiple electoral theatres, including the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, thereby suggesting a continuum of alleged manipulations that, in his formulation, had eroded procedural sanctity and subverted representative legitimacy.
Rahul shared a post on social media and said, "Assam and Bengal are clear cases of the election being stolen by the BJP with the support of the EC. We agree with Mamata ji. More than 100 seats were stolen in Bengal. We have seen this playbook before: Madhya Pradesh. Haryana. Maharashtra. Lok Sabha 2024 etc. Chunav chori, sanstha chori — ab aur chaara hi kya hai!"
Banerjee, whose party suffered a resounding setback, had earlier castigated the Election Commission as being partisan, while alleging that the BJP had “looted” a substantial tranche of seats; she also claimed personal intimidation at a counting centre.
The electoral verdict itself was unequivocal in numerical terms, with the BJP securing 206 seats in the 294-member Assembly, whereas the Trinamool Congress was reduced to 80.
Parallel reactions from opposition figures further deepened the discursive confrontation, as Akhilesh Yadav characterised the outcome as a “black day” for democracy, alleging procedural distortions and coercive deployment of central forces, while Kapil Sibal asserted that the defeat of the Trinamool Congress was engineered not by electoral competition but through institutional collusion and voter disenfranchisement.
In Assam, meanwhile, the BJP consolidated its dominance by securing a third consecutive term, thereby reinforcing its regional ascendancy even as the opposition’s allegations cast a long and contentious shadow over the integrity of the electoral process.