Lok Sabha Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi on Thursday asked Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to resign and “turn approver”, while alleging that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah were at the top of a “conspiracy to steal elections” and would eventually face investigation.In one of his strongest attacks on the Election Commission and the government, Gandhi claimed there was enough information to establish with “100 per cent certainty” that elections, including the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and Assembly elections, were being “rigged”. He warned that the responsible “deshdrohis” (anti-nationals) would eventually be punished.His attack came a day after The Indian Express reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had raised objections at least 14 times over the past 10 months on issues ranging from additions and deletions in electoral rolls and changes to Form 6 to the special intensive revision (SIR) and access to the voter database.Opening his presentation with videos of Modi and Shah expressing confidence that the BJP would remain in power for years, Gandhi questioned how leaders operating in a democracy could speak with such certainty.Calling anti-incumbency India’s “biggest political force”, he said even former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, despite being at the height of her popularity after the Bangladesh war, faced it within a few years. He cited electoral swings in Haryana, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, arguing that governments across parties had historically faced the phenomenon.Gandhi contrasted this with Modi and Shah and asked why the same force appeared not to affect them. Anti-incumbency, he argued, disappeared only in systems without functioning democracy, invoking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and North Korea. “We have been looking for the answer and we have found the answer,” he said.At the centre of Gandhi’s presentation was what he described as a chain linking the vote, Constitution, laws and institutions. The Constitution derived its authority from the vote, laws flowed from the Constitution and institutions emerged from those laws, he argued. “If the vote has been destroyed, then our Constitution has been destroyed,” Gandhi said, maintaining that the issue went beyond electoral rolls and struck at India’s democratic structure.He summed up his charge as “vote chori, kanoon chori, sanstha chori”, arguing that if MPs entered Parliament on the strength of “stolen votes”, the legitimacy of laws passed by them and changes made to institutions would also come under question.He also displayed a timeline beginning with the December 21, 2023, law concerning the CEC and Election Commissioners, which he alleged gave the poll chief immunity from investigation.Responding to Mamata Banerjee’s call for an INDIA bloc meeting and nationwide agitation, Gandhi said there was “100 per cent agreement” within the Opposition that “vote chori” was taking place and the parties would work together.