Rahul Gandhi

NEW DELHI: The chief electoral officer (CEO) of Uttar Pradesh on Thursday refuted Rahul Gandhi’s claim that Aditya Srivastava and Vishal Singh—named by the Lok Sabha leader of opposition during his “poll theft” press conference against the Election Commission (ECI)—are registered as voters in multiple states, including Uttar Pradesh, in addition to Karnataka.“It is being claimed that Aditya Srivastava is registered as a voter in Mumbai, Bengaluru (at two booths), and Lucknow, while Vishal Singh is listed in Bengaluru (at two booths) and Varanasi,” the Uttar Pradesh CEO said in a statement on X. “However, an inspection of their respective EPIC numbers revealed that Srivastava is registered only at booth number 458 in Bengaluru’s Mahadevapura assembly constituency, and Singh is registered only at booth number 513 in the same constituency,” the statement noted.“Srivastava is not a voter in Lucknow, while Singh cannot vote in Varanasi,” it added.Gandhi mentioned Srivastava and Singh during the press conference where he doubled down on his allegation against ECI. Citing data from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, he claimed that over 1 lakh votes were “stolen” in Mahadevapura, an assembly segment under the Bangalore Central parliamentary constituency.The Bangalore Central seat was retained by BJP’s PC Mohan, who secured a fourth consecutive term with 6,58,915 votes, defeating Congress candidate Mansoor Ali Khan (6,26,208) by a margin of 32,707 votes.