Congress leader Rahul Gandhi held a press conference on August 7 in New Delhi in which he made serious allegations of voter list manipulations in at least one Karnataka constituency during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and accused the Election Commission of ‘vote theft’ and ‘criminal fraud’.

During his presentation, he showed that the names of two persons—Aditya Srivastava and Vishal Singh—were also on the voter list of other states, including Uttar Pradesh. To make his point, he shared screenshots of this, taken on March 16, 2025, from the Election Commission website and questioned how the same voter featured in voter lists of more than one state.

The screenshot shared by the Opposition leader shows Aditya Srivastava (with voter id or EPIC number FPP6437040) present in the voter list of two booths of the Mahadevpura constituency in Karnataka. The same name with the same EPIC number was also present in the voter lists of Jogeshwari East constituency in Maharashtra and Lucknow East in Uttar Pradesh.

He also shared a screenshot of a Vishal Singh (EPIC number INB2722288) whose name also appeared in voter lists of two booths of Mahadevpura assembly in Karnataka. His name was also present in the voter list of Varanasi Cantt assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh with the same EPIC number.

Responding to Rahul Gandhi’s allegations, the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Uttar Pradesh issued a statement on August 7, 2025, denying Aditya Srivastava Vishal Singh were in the state’s voter lists.

The statement said that on searching for Aditya Srivastava (EPIC number FPP6437040), son of S P Srivastava,  and Vishal Singh (EPIC number INB2722288), son of Mahipal Singh, on the Election Commission website it found that Srivastava’s name at serial number 1265 in the voter list of Mahadevpura’s booth number 458  Bengaluru Urban. Meanwhile, Vishal Singh’s name was present at serial number 926 in the voter list of booth 513 of Mahadevpura assembly of Bengaluru Urban. Refuting Gandhi’s claims, the UP CEO said that the names of these two voters were not part of voter lists of UP’s Lucknow East and Varanasi Cantt constituencies.

What is the Truth?

Firstly, the screenshot shared by Rahul Gandhi from the Election Commission website is from March 16, 2025, but the statement issued by the Chief Electoral Officer of Uttar Pradesh is based on the EPIC search on the Election Commission website on August 7, 2025.

To verify the statement by the Uttar Pradesh CEO, we searched the names and EPIC numbers shared by Rahul Gandhi in the Draft Roll-2025 published by the Election Commission on 29 October 2024 and Final Roll-2025 published on 7 January 2025 for Lucknow East and Varanasi Cantt constituencies. We found that the names of Aditya Srivastava and Vishal Singh were present in these lists. The EPIC numbers of both match the screenshot shared by Rahul Gandhi. The UP CEP’s statement does not match the information in the Draft Roll-2025 and Final Roll-2025 available on the Election Commission website that we accessed. Their statement appears to be misleading and false.

The links to download the full Draft Roll-2025 and the Final Roll-2025, published by the EC on October 19, 2024, and January 7, 2025, respectively for Lucknow East and Varanasi Cantt constituencies have been added below.

A Hurried Response?

A careful reading of the UP CEO’s statement revealed more errors.

For instance, the statement says that on searching on the Election Commission website, the name of Aditya Srivastava, son of S P Srivastava (EPIC number FPP6437040), appears at serial number 1265 in the voter list of booth number 458 of Mahadevapura Assembly constituency 174, Bengaluru Urban.

However, when we searched with Aditya Srivastava’s EPIC number in the voter list of the Mahadevpura constituency, the voter details were different from the UP CEO’s statement. The voter details do not show Aditya Srivastava’s father’s name but the name of a relative — Rithika Srivastava.

Moreover, when we tried to look for Aditya Srivastava based on the information in the screenshot shared by Rahul Gandhi under the ‘Search by Details’ option on the Election Commission’s website, we found the name Aditya Srivastava, the son of S P Srivastava (as mentioned in the UP CEO’s statement), in the voter list of Lucknow East assembly seat. However, in a strange twist, the EPIC number against his name is different now.

We cross-checked his details with the Final Roll-2025 published by the Election Commission and found that most of these details such as the polling station, serial number and age of the voter (Aditya Srivastava, son of SP Srivastava) matched except the EPIC number. The EPIC number FPP6437040 has been changed to RXM4728275.

The discrepancies in our findings and the UP CEO’s indicate that the claims made by the electoral officer are misleading and likely issued hurriedly and without adequate research.

This article was originally published on AltNews.

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