'Shakun Rani only voted once', K'taka CEO asks LoP to provide docs

The Karnataka chief electoral officer on Sunday issued a notice to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, asking him to share documents based on which he had alleged that a woman voted twice. Soon after the notice was issued to the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, the Election Commission once again asked him to either sign a declaration to substantiate his allegations of vote theft in Karnataka, Haryana and Maharashtra or apologise to the nation for making "absurd" allegations. Karnataka's top poll officer told Gandhi that the documents will help his office carry out a detailed inquiry. In the letter, the CEO referred to Gandhi’s recent press conference, where he claimed that certain documents in his presentation were “EC data” and alleged that voter Shakun Rani had voted twice based on records “given by the polling officer.” The letter mentioned Rahul Gandhi saying, “Es ID card par do baar vote laga hai, wo jo tick hai, polling booth ke officer ki hai. (This ID has been used to vote twice, the tick marks were made by polling booth officer)”. The poll body noted that during an inquiry, Shakun Rani stated she voted only once. A preliminary probe also found that the tick-marked document Gandhi showed was not issued by the polling officer, contrary to his claim.

Notice to Shri Rahul Gandhi, Hon’ble Member of Parliament and LoP, Lok Sabha.@ECISVEEP pic.twitter.com/plSfgoeytZ

— Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka (@ceo_karnataka) August 10, 2025

The Congress MP also criticised the Election Commission for not providing voter lists in electronic format, arguing that machine-readable data would have revealed the alleged fraud in “30 seconds”. He accused the commission of supplying only “non-machine-readable papers” to make scrutiny difficult, saying the party’s verification process had taken six months.According to him, Congress’s internal research found 11,965 duplicate voters, 40,009 with fake or invalid addresses, 10,452 “bulk voters” using the same address, and 4,132 with invalid photos. He further claimed that 33,692 voters had misused Form 6 meant for new registrations.

(State Correspondent)