Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat launched a scathing attack on the Gandhi family and the Congress party on Thursday and accused them of 'manipulating' elections for decades through booth capturing, voter intimidation, and misuse of government machinery.

Addressing a Press conference at the BJP headquarters in the national Capital, Shekhawat alleged that this “legacy of fraud and deceit” runs deep in the party’s history.

Citing the first General Elections in 1952, Shekhawat claimed that under then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s leadership, ballot boxes were tampered with, including incidents where nitric acid was poured into them and reports of this were carried by newspapers at the time.

In a bid to "boost voter confidence", the Supreme Court, in an interim order passed on Thursday, directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to upload district-wise data of about 65 lakh electors in poll-bound Bihar whose names were omitted in the draft electoral rolls following the initial phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi ordered that the details of these electors, whose enumeration forms were not submitted, should be uploaded on the official websites by Tuesday (August 19), along with the reasons such as death, permanent migration, duplication, or being untraceable.

The information uploaded on the websites of the District Electoral Officers and the Chief Electoral Officer of Bihar should be searchable using EPIC (Electors Photo Identity Card) numbers, added the Justice Surya Kant-led Bench.

As heavy rainfall lashed the national Capital, leading to severe waterlogging and traffic disruptions across the city, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders on Thursday launched a scathing attack on the Delhi government, questioning its preparedness and sarcastically dubbing it a "government of four engines.”

Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Assembly and former Delhi Chief Minister, Atishi, took to social media platform X to share a video of waterlogged roads in Chhatarpur and said, "This is the condition of Chhatarpur. Delhi roads turn into ponds after a short spell of rain. Is this the ‘Proper Management’ of Delhi Chief Minister @gupta_rekha and PWD Minister @p_sahibsingh."

AAP Delhi unit chief Saurabh Bharadwaj also shared visuals from Greater Kailash on X and said, "Well, the boat started sailing in Greater Kailash too – Government of four engines.”

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has strongly objected to political leaders using phrases like “Vote Chori” to allege electoral malpractices. Sources said the poll body views such language as an attack on the dignity of Indian voters and the integrity of election officials.

According to sources, the Commission says the “One Person, One Vote” principle has been firmly in place since the first general elections of 1951-52, and any allegation of duplicate voting must be backed by verifiable evidence.

“If anyone has any proof of any person actually voting twice in any election, it should be shared with ECI with a written Affidavit rather than colouring all the electors of India as 'Chor' without any proof,” ECI sources said.

The leaders of the INDIA Bloc, led by Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, will launch the Vote Adhikar Yatra from August 17 in Sasaram city of Bihar’s Rohtas district.

The Gujarat government has approved applications from 22 major enterprises involving investments of Rs 1,478.71 crore, expected to generate more than 4,136 new jobs.

The Election Commission (EC), in its routine bulletin on the contentious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) drive in Bihar, said on Wednesday that none of the political parties have filed any objection or complaints so far, regarding inclusion or exclusion of electors from the voters list.

More than 17,000 individuals approached the poll panel directly to register their complaints, EC further informed in its bulletin.

A total of 74,525 new electors have requisitioned the poll panel for inclusion of their names in the voting list. Out of these, six individuals who turned 18 after the publication of draft rolls on August 1, have submitted their forms through Booth level Agents (BLAs).

The BJP on Wednesday said that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's claims on purported eviction of Bengali-speaking migrant workers from a colony in New Delhi have been busted by her party's MP in Parliament.

The BJP's information technology cell chief and the party’s central observer for West Bengal, Amit Malviya, said that in the Lok Sabha, June Maliah, the actress-turned-politician and MP from the Medinipur constituency, had asked a question about the “evictions” of Bengali-speaking migrant workers in Jai Hind Colony, Vasant Kunj, in the House.

The truth, as revealed in the government reply, is that no eviction drive took place, there was no water supply cut and not a single complaint was filed with the Delhi Jal Board, except for one social media post, Malviya said in a social media statement on X on Wednesday morning.

Malviya claimed that only two electricity connections were disconnected, and that too on the orders of a civil court.

The records of the voters' lists of around a hundred polling booths in West Bengal, post the last Special Intensive Revision carried out by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in 2002, are not available.

The 2022 list is supposed to be the basis for carrying out the SIR by the Commission this year. Insiders from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, said that the matter would be brought to the notice of the ECI and permission would be sought to use the draft voters’ list for 2003 as the basis of the fresh SIR.

The sources said that, in the case of certain booths, the records of the 2002 post-SIR were not available at all. In some cases, the lists have been damaged in such a way that it is impossible to upload them to the Commission's server.

It is learnt that the majority of the polling booths, whose records are not available, are from South 24 Parganas, Howrah, North 24 Parganas, and Birbhum districts, all being traditional strongholds of Trinamool Congress.

The Maharashtra Cabinet, on Tuesday, gave its approval for the recruitment of 15,000 personnel in the state police force, officials said.