EC sends notice to Tejashwi Yadav over ‘fake’ voter ID

The Election Commission (EC) has sent a notice to RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, saying that the voter ID he showed during a press conference on Saturday, claiming his exclusion from the voter list, was not an officially issued document.

The EC has also sought details of his EPIC number while refuting his allegations, confirming that his name appears at serial No. 416 of polling station 204 (located at Bihar Animal Sciences University’s library in Patna) with EPIC number RAB0456228.

The Electoral Registration Officer of Digha sent a written communication to Yadav, clarifying that his name was indeed present in the draft voter list. The EC had earlier dismissed Yadav’s claims as baseless and shared the relevant extract from the electoral roll. Yadav, however, claimed that he had voted in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections using a different EPIC number (RAB2916120), which is now missing from the draft roll.

The BJP on Sunday seized on the controversy, with national spokesperson Sambit Patra accusing Yadav of committing an offence by allegedly possessing two voter IDs. “The Congress and RJD have been thoroughly exposed. Did you (Yadav) lie under oath? Did you present wrong facts to the EC,” Patra said, citing discrepancies between the EPIC numbers in his 2020 election affidavit and the current draft roll.

He also targeted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, alleging a pattern of falsehoods aimed at undermining constitutional institutions like the EC. He mocked Rahul’s recent “atom bomb” remark on poll rigging, comparing it to Pakistan’s hollow nuclear threats. He said no complaints of voter deletions had been reported by political party agents in Bihar, dismissing the Opposition’s allegations as politically motivated attempts to protect dynastic interests rather than democratic integrity.