New Delhi, June 14 -- Rahul Gandhi stood before twenty-three opposition party leaders on June 8 and told them that Indian elections are being stolen. "100 per cent the elections are being stolen," he said. "Please remove doubt from your minds." He described a country in which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party controls the legal system, the bureaucracy, intelligence agencies, and the Election Commission. The instruments that opposition parties have traditionally relied on to compete, he argued, no longer function because the state that once guaranteed fair competition no longer exists. The speech was delivered privately at an I.N.D.I.A. alliance meeting in Delhi and its contents were made public five days later.

vote banks, caste arithmet...