The Election Commission of India (ECI), instead of investigating the anomalies detected in the electoral rolls which remain visible on its own website, dismissed them as misleading in response to Rahul Gandhi’s revelation, and the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Uttar Pradesh denied that voters Aditya Srivastava and Vishal Singh were in the state’s voter lists, although their names are still present in the rolls as published earlier.
The controversy arose after Congress MP and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi alleged large-scale voter list manipulations during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, particularly in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura Assembly segment of Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency, while highlighting examples of voters holding multiple Electronic Electoral Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) or appearing in rolls of multiple states.
The ECI swiftly rejected the allegations as misleading and asked Gandhi to provide proof, but the very records he referred to could still be found on the commission’s official portal.
Rahul Gandhi had cited two Mahadevapura voters, Gurkirat Singh Dang and Shakun Rani, with four and two EPIC numbers respectively, each linked to different polling stations in Bengaluru Urban district, and claimed that in one case the same individual had voted using more than one voter ID, according to The News Minute.
Official data shows that the polling stations attached to each ID vary, yet the EPIC entries remain intact on the ECI’s database despite previous commitments by the commission to eliminate duplicates through a dedicated verification drive. Shakun Rani’s applications under Form 6 on two separate dates in 2023, though legally permissible for constituency changes, were used to illustrate the ease of duplications.
The ECI had earlier faced similar allegations from Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee regarding multiple voters with the same EPIC numbers, prompting the commission to undertake a national exercise to remove such duplications.
In May 2025, the ECI announced that it had resolved the issue after reviewing its database of 99 crore electors, yet fresh disputes emerged during the ongoing special intensive revision of rolls, including the discovery that Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav’s name appeared under two EPIC numbers, which the ECI is now probing.
In his August 7, 2025, presentation, Rahul Gandhi displayed screenshots taken on March 16, 2025, from the ECI website showing Aditya Srivastava and Vishal Singh, both listed in two booths of Mahadevapura in Karnataka, as well as in constituencies in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, all under the same EPIC numbers.
However, the Uttar Pradesh CEO’s statement on the same day insisted that neither name appeared in the state’s voter lists, citing a search on the Election Commission website, which only returned entries for Bengaluru Urban, according to Alt News.
An examination of the Draft Roll-2025 published on 29 October 2024 and the Final Roll-2025 published on 7 January 2025 for Lucknow East and Varanasi Cantt constituencies shows that the names of both Aditya Srivastava and Vishal Singh were indeed listed there, with EPIC numbers matching those in Gandhi’s screenshots. This contradicts the Uttar Pradesh CEO’s denial and raises questions about the accuracy and timing of the state election office’s verification process.
Further scrutiny revealed inconsistencies in the UP CEO’s account. The officer’s statement claimed that Aditya Srivastava, son of S P Srivastava, was listed in booth number 458 of Mahadevapura, yet the voter roll retrieved through the EPIC number search displayed a relative named Rithika Srivastava instead of the father’s name.
Moreover, when the same voter details were retrieved using the ‘Search by Details’ function, Aditya Srivastava, son of S P Srivastava, appeared in the Lucknow East voter list, though with a different EPIC number.
Cross-referencing with the Final Roll-2025 confirmed that the polling station, serial number, and other personal details matched those from earlier listings except for the EPIC number, which appeared to have been changed from FPP6437040 to RXM4728275.