Araria (Bihar), Aug 24 (PTI) Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday charged the Election Commission with having a "partnership" with the ruling BJP at the Centre, and vowed to thwart "institutionalised theft of votes" in the guise of special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bihar.

A week into the fortnight-long 'Voter Adhikar Yatra', Gandhi also seemed delighted at the response, claiming that people were taking part "organically, without being asked to do so", and that the slogan 'vote chor, gaddi chhod' (vote thief, vacate your seat of power) was now on the lips of "even six-year-old children".

The Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha wound up the second leg of the yatra, which will now resume on Tuesday, with a press conference in Araria district, where he reached from adjoining Purnea in an impromptu motorcycle rally.

The Congress leader deftly side-stepped a pointed question about the reluctance to declare RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, seated by his side, as the chief ministerial candidate even though the latter had recently made an open pitch for making Gandhi the Prime Minister after the next Lok Sabha polls.

"All INDIA bloc partners are working together in a spirit of mutual respect, without any tension. We will contest the polls together and the results will be good," Gandhi said.

He also disclosed that a "manifesto committee" was at work for the upcoming assembly polls, which would focus on providing security to farmers who were in need of better storage facilities and relief from the burden of debt.

"These were also the things we had promised in our national manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls held last year," the Rae Bareli MP pointed out.

"Votes were stolen in Maharashtra, Haryana and Karnataka, and the Election Commission was quick to demand an affidavit from me. Just a few days later, BJP leader Anurag Thakur made allegations which were of a similar nature, but no affidavit was sought from him. Also, in Bihar, where names of 65 lakh people have been deleted from the draft electoral rolls, the BJP has not made a whimper. All these point to a clandestine partnership between the BJP and the Election Commission," Gandhi alleged.

Rubbishing the charge that he was tarnishing the image of the EC by alleging 'vote chori' (vote theft), the Congress leader said that even six-year-olds in Bihar can be heard raising the slogan 'vote chor, gaddi chhod'.

"Clearly, there is a sentiment against special intensive revision (SIR), which is nothing but an institutionalised attempt to steal votes. And we would not let that happen," he said.

On the yatra, he said that so far, it has been successful.

"People have been joining us naturally, organically, without any effort on our part to make them take part," Gandhi claimed.

The press conference was also addressed by Yadav and CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, both of whom stressed that the BJP's unwillingness to raise an alarm over the deletion of voters' names on a large scale, "some of whom might have voted for them", confirmed their worst suspicions.

While Yadav mocked the EC as 'Godi Aayog' (a pliant commission), Bhattacharya criticised the BJP's famed machinery, which was "unable to rope in booth-level agents for getting restored in the electoral rolls wrongfully deleted names".

The press conference was preceded by a public meeting, which the leaders addressed from atop an open vehicle.

The yatra seemed to have achieved ironing out of some mutual differences with Pappu Yadav, the Independent MP from Purnea, being allowed to clamber atop the vehicle and give an impassioned speech in which he called Tejashwi Yadav the "hope for Bihar", showering encomiums on the RJD leader for relentlessly fighting the NDA government.

The RJD leader, who has been known to have no love lost for the Purnea MP, several years his senior, also acknowledged the presence of the latter in his speech.

Pappu Yadav, who supports the Congress, and young leader Kanhaiya Kumar, had been prevented from getting on an open vehicle in Patna more than a month ago, when top INDIA bloc leaders, including Gandhi, had gathered to stage a march to the EC office in protest against SIR.

In Araria, Gandhi, who loves to get chatty with the common folks in the course of his political sojourns, beckoned a child to his vehicle and told the gathering with a rhetorical flourish, "This kid would have the same right to vote as the scion of the wealthiest man in the country. This right to equality is enshrined in the Constitution drafted by Babasaheb Ambedkar, which the BJP, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, wants to destroy." "They have robbed the poor of all hopes for a better future by privatising the public sector and introducing the Agniveer scheme in the armed forces. We must stop them," he added. PTI PKD NAC ACD

EC, BJP in partnership; SIR institutionalised theft of votes: Rahul