JD(U) spokesperson had two EPIC numbers in same Bihar constituency

In early September 2025, the Bharatiya Janata Party accused Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera and his wife, Telangana Congress vice president Kota Neelima, of electoral violations. 

Amit Malviya, head of the BJP’s Information and Technology department, alleged on X that both Khera and Neelima held two separate Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers from two separate constituencies. This meant that they could potentially cast their vote twice. Under the Representation of the People Act, 1950, a citizen with two voter registrations can be punished with either imprisonment for up to a year, a fine, or both. “Rahul Gandhi cannot extricate himself from these acts of criminality within his own ranks,” Malviya wrote. “He must speak, and the Election Commission must investigate.”

Within days of Malviya’s post, the Election Commission of India (ECI) sent both Khera and Neelima notices directing them to “show cause as to why action shouldn’t be taken against you.” Khera said he had applied to the election commission to have his earlier voter registration deleted after moving houses in 2016, while Neelima stated she submitted a request for a change of constituency in 2017. 

This explanation held no water with the BJP. “He [Khera] had multiple EPIC ids, why did he not reveal [this] to the people of the country,” Pradeep Bhandari, a national spokesperson of the party, said on a news show. “Why is he revealing it after we have exposed — his silence speaks to his complicity.” 

Over the course of our ongoing investigation into the election commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar, an exercise meant to verify the eligibility of the state’s nearly 80 million voters, we discovered that the election commission faced a similar situation with another politician in Bihar. The poll body responded with a proactive approach that centred the consent and knowledge of the voters involved. 

Until recently, Dr Nihora Prasad Yadav — vice president and spokesperson of the BJP’s alliance partner Janata Dal (United) — along with his wife and one of his three children, possessed two separate EPIC numbers, registered to two different booths within the same constituency. Their registration to one of these booths was struck off from the election commission’s draft electoral rolls after it concluded the intensive revision.

Not just a simple deletion 

As part of our investigation into the intensive revision, we analysed the draft electoral rolls for 200 booths across 58 constituencies in 26 districts, which recorded unusually high deletions — the names of between 324 to 641 voters had been removed from these booths. 

This included booth number 377 from Digha constituency in Patna, where 350 voters had been removed. Yadav, his wife Sharmila Kumari, and one of his sons, Pratyush, were among those whose names appeared in the deleted voters list from this booth. 

We visited Yadav’s residence to verify this information. He was away, but his wife Sharmila confirmed that their names had been removed. “When the officials had come to take our documents, we gave them,” she told us. She did not specify whom they gave the documents to, or whether the Booth Level Officer (BLO) had confirmed receiving them. 

While we were interviewing Sharmila, Yadav called her on her cell phone. He asked to speak with the reporter present. On the call, Yadav angrily demanded to know why we were at his house. He claimed that our information regarding the deletion was “fully wrong” — even after we informed him that his and his family members’ names appeared on the list of deleted voters. 

Yadav insisted that his family members and he were included in the draft electoral rolls. After the call concluded, Sharmila changed her testimony too. She told us that no one from their family had been deleted. 

But Shiv Kumar, the BLO of booth number 377, confirmed what the ECI data showed. We also ran the EPIC numbers corresponding with Yadav, his wife, and his son from booth number 377 on the ECI website. Each time, they threw up an error message: No Result Found. 

“The names were deleted under the previous BLO,” said Kumar, and added that he had started work in August 2025. (The election commission conducted voter verification for the intensive revision between 24 June and 25 July.) 

Meanwhile, half an hour after we left Yadav’s house, Yadav called us again. He reiterated that neither he nor his family members had been deleted. 

Yadav’s insistence gave us pause. We cross-checked the ECI records again. This time we found that he, Sharmila, and their three children Pratyush, Swati Raj, and Pushkal Yadav, were in fact on the rolls. But they were registered from the neighbouring booth numbered 376. 

Yadav’s voter registration at booth number 376 had minor variations from the one at booth number 377. The honorific “Dr” was missing from his name in the rolls for booth number 376. And his father’s name was spelt differently: Dhanushdhari Rai in booth 377 and Dhanushdhari Yadav in 376. 

The voter rolls from January 1, 2025, as well as the voter rolls from the 2024 Lok Sabha election confirmed that Yadav, Sharmila, and Pratyush had earlier been registered from two different booths. In those rolls, they were registered to booths numbered 325 and 326. 

In July 2025, while voter verification was underway, the election commission redrew the booths in the state’s constituencies, following its recent decision to cap the number of voters in each booth in Bihar to 1,200 people. The booths earlier numbered 325 and 326 were split into three and relabelled 375, 376, and 377.

Voter-centric approach

In Yadav’s case, those who carried out the voter verification appeared to have taken several measures to ensure due diligence before they deleted his name, as well as those of his family members. 

We contacted Nilam Kumari, the BLO assigned to the booth previously numbered 325, who, according to Shiv Kumar, deleted the names originally. A man named Devraj answered the call on Kumari’s officially-listed number and identified himself as her husband. He claimed that he had conducted the voter verification process on Kumari’s behalf. 

According to Devraj,  when he realised that Yadav and two of his family members were listed in two booths, he informed Amrendra Kumar, the BLO for the second booth that Yadav and his family were registered from, previously numbered 326. (Amrendra is also the current BLO of booth number 376.) 

Devraj told us that Amrendra and he then met with Yadav, who asked that he, his wife Sharmila, and their son Pratyush be deleted from the rolls for the booth previously numbered 325, and retained in the rolls for the booth previously numbered 326, since that is where Yadav’s two other children were registered from as well. Devraj added that because he was only able to meet Yadav, he marked him as “shifted,” and Sharmila and Pratyush, who were not present during this conversation, as “absent” in the deleted voters list. 

After Shiv Kumar was appointed as the BLO for booth now numbered 377, he realised that Yadav and his family members had been deleted from the rolls for this booth. He visited the politician’s residence twice to obtain their documents and restore them on the rolls but no one was home on either occasion, he claimed.  

We couldn’t confirm whether Yadav, his wife, or his son cast votes twice in previous elections. He owns three homes in the same colony, including the one he currently resides in, according to the local residents and BLOs we interviewed. None of the BLOs could tell us which home fell under which booth. 

“A voter wilfully registered in two places is a criminal offense under the penal code and the Representation of the People Act,” SY Quraishi, the former chief election commissioner of India, told us. But in Yadav’s case, “now that one of his registrations has been deleted, there is no criminal element,” Quraishi said. 

After we concluded our reporting, we contacted Yadav again to enquire about the two voter registrations. “I never knew that I was registered in two places,” he said, “I found out during the SIR.” Yadav added that he was unaware of how long his family members and he had held the dual registrations. He confirmed that the BLOs consulted with him on which registration to delete, and which one to retain. He denied ever having voted twice. We asked Yadav why he hadn’t clarified these details to our reporter when they first contacted him regarding the deletion of his and his family members’ names from booth number 377. “I was busy at a party meeting,” he said.  

ECI spokespersons and Vinod Singh Gunjiyal, Bihar’s Chief Electoral Officer, did not respond to requests for comment. We received an automated note of acknowledgement from the ECI’s office.  This copy will be updated if we receive a response. 

The SIR, which culminated with the deletions of nearly 65 lakh names, has drawn widespread criticism for its hasty execution and raised concerns about voter disenfranchisement. As our previous reporting has shown, the process appears to be  riddled with inconsistencies—from high numbers of voters that clustered in single households, to the lack of standardised procedures for voter deletions, which led to different BLOs basing their decisions to delete a voter on varying levels of scrutiny. Our reporting also revealed that the reinstatement process is further disenfranchising poor and marginalised voters, most of whom do not have the luxury of leaving their work to run from pillar-to-post and ensure their inclusion.

Yadav is a staunch advocate of the SIR. During a recent news debate, he dismissed any backlash as part of the initial resistance typical to an electoral reform. He cited the election commission’s introduction of the EPIC numbers  in 1993 as one such instance. “Even at that time, the people in opposition said that it was a conspiracy to deprive Dalit and Muslim citizens of their right to vote,” he said. 

Legitimate voters who have recently been deleted from the draft rolls were wrong to be alarmed, Yadav continued. “Whoever’s name has been removed can go to their respective booths and get the mistake corrected.”

Edited by Nikita Saxena.

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