Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 3: The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav’s antics to put the Election Commission of India (ECI) in a wrong box, may boomerang on the former Bihar deputy chief minister with the poll body launching an inquiry to find if he had obtained his second voter ID card illegally through “non-official channels.”
The ECI, which has refuted Mr Yadav’s claim that his name is not in the draft voter list, on Sunday sent him a notice asking for details of the identification that he mentioned at a press conference in Patna on Saturday where he claimed that his name was missing from Bihar’s electoral rolls after the “Special Intensive Revision” (SIR) exercise to update the voters list, sources in the poll body said.
Staunchly denying his claim, the Commission had said the EPIC number of the ID is not “officially issued,” and suspects forgery and is looking into verifying the authenticity. Mr Yadav’s claim had come a day after the Commission had published the draft electoral rolls after the hugely controversial SIR exercise.
However, confusion prevailed over the fact that the EPIC number quoted by Mr Yadav was different from the one which the poll body gave him in the list. Mr Yadav had claimed that he voted in last year’s Lok Sabha election using a voter ID card with the EPIC number RAB2916120, which is now missing from the draft roll. Instead, the ECI list shows Mr Yadav’s name with the EPIC number RAB0456228. Yadav is a voter in the Digha Assembly seat, but represents the Raghopur Assembly seat as an MLA in the State Assembly.
The Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) of the Digha constituency wrote to the RJD leader. “It is to be informed that in the press conference held on 02.08.2025, you told that your name is not mentioned in the draft voter list. After investigation, it was found that your name is mentioned at serial number 416 of polling station number 204 (Library Building of Bihar Animal Science University), whose EPIC number is RAB0456228,” the ERO said in his letter.
The ECI in its notice said, “After investigation, it was found that your name is mentioned at serial number 416 of polling station number 204 (Library Building of Bihar Animal Science University), whose EPIC number is RAB0456228. According to you, as per the quote of your press conference, your EPIC number is RAB2916120.”
“According to preliminary investigation, EPIC number RAB2916120 does not appear to be officially issued. Therefore, you are requested to kindly provide the details of the mentioned EPIC card (along with the original copy of the card) mentioned by you in the press conference held on 02.08.2025 to the undersigned, so that it can be thoroughly investigated,” the notice read. The letter does not mention any deadline by which Mr Yadav must provide his EPIC card for investigation.
Officials, while stressing that his name figures in the draft electoral rolls at serial number 416, said even if he still had any grievance, he should have followed the legal procedure laid down. He used the electoral roll with EPIC RAB0456228 for filing his nomination papers on affidavit in 2020, the sources said.
“He was having this voter ID card number even in the electoral roll in 2015. His name with this voter card number exists in the draft electoral rolls too,” an official said. The other voter card with the number – RAB2916120 – has been found to be non-existent, and records more than 10 years old have been checked, the sources said. No records have been found for the second card number “yet”, they said.
“It is highly likely that the second card was never made through an official channel. Further inquiries are on to understand the reality of the second voter card number… whether it is a forged document,” the official added.
At a press conference yesterday, Mr Yadav had said the Election Commission had explained the removal of 65 lakh voters as a result of deaths and migration. “But in the list provided to us by the Election Commission, they have cleverly not given the address of any voter, no booth number, and no EPIC number, so that we cannot find out whose names have been removed from the voter list,” Mr Yadav claimed.
In front of cameras, he had tried to verify his own details, using his EPIC (Elector’s Photo Identity Card) number — a unique alphanumeric code printed on voter IDs — but said the information was not on the Commission’s online portal. Reacting to the ERO’s letter, RJD spokesperson Chittaranjan Gagan said the ECI, acting at the behest of the BJP, wanted to divert attention from the questions about the draft roll raised by Mr Yadav and other leaders of the INDIA bloc.
The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) urged the ECI to take cognizance of Mr Yadav’s two voter ID cards and file a case against him. In a press conference addressed by spokespersons from the BJP and all its allies in Bihar, they asked where the two EPIC numbers came from, noting that it was a crime for a single individual to possess two voter ID cards.
The ECI sources have also claimed that CPI(ML) MP Sudama Prasad’s wife has two EPIC cards. Sources have shared details of those EPIC cards. His party is a petitioner in the Supreme Court against SIR.
Meanwhile, the ECI said as of 3 PM on Sunday it has received 941 claims and objections from voters on the draft electoral rolls but no political party has so far approached it with requests to remove or include names in the draft rolls.
In a related development, the ECI has also described as “absurd” the attempts by the Congress leader P Chidambaram to connect the SIR in Bihar with Tamil Nadu. After fact-checking Mr Chidambaram’s statement in which he criticised the exercise and claimed lakhs of names could be deleted from the voter list in his home state, the poll body, terming his claims “misleading” said the “SIR has not yet been rolled out in Tamil Nadu.” It also accused the leader of floating “false figures” about enrolment of 6.5 lakh voters in Tamil Nadu. “It is therefore absurd to connect the SIR exercise in Bihar with Tamil Nadu. Such peddling of false statements with respect to SIR should be avoided, it said.
Mr Chidambaram had questioned the Election Commission (EC) as to how it came to the conclusion that several lakh voters in Bihar have “permanently migrated”, resulting in “deletion” of their names from the voters’ list. “Calling them ‘permanently migrated’ is an insult to the migrant workers and a gross interference in the right of the electorate of Tamil Nadu to elect a government of its choice,” the former Union Minister wrote on X.
“While 65 lakh voters are in danger of being disenfranchised in Bihar, reports of ‘adding’ 6.5 lakh persons as voters in Tamil Nadu is alarming and patently illegal,” Mr Chidambaram posted on X earlier on Sunday. The EC said as per Article 19(1)(e), all citizens have the right to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India. “It is for the voters to come forward and get enrolled in the constituency where they are eligible,” it said.
Further explaining, the poll body said, “A person originally belonging to Tamil Nadu, but is ordinarily residing in Delhi, is entitled to be registered as an Elector in Delhi.” “Similarly, a person originally belonging to Bihar, but is ordinarily residing in Chennai, is entitled to be registered as an Elector in Chennai,” it said.
Mr Chidambaram’s post came days after the EC claimed that more than 65 lakh enumeration forms were “not included” in the draft electoral rolls in Bihar, where assembly polls are due later this year, bringing down the total number of registered voters to 7.24 crore from around 7.9 crore.
It claimed that while 22,34,501 people registered in the electoral rolls were found to be dead during the exercise, another 36.28 lakh have “permanently shifted” out of the state or were “not found” at their stated addresses, and another 7.01 lakh have been found enrolled at “more than one place.”
