Karnataka’s Mahadevapura Assembly constituency had 803 voter IDs linked to just 397 people after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, a finding that lands in the middle of the ‘vote chori’ row that started in the same seat.

The SIR was meant to weed out duplicate entries. The final rolls show the opposite in Mahadevapura. In several cases, more than three voter IDs were issued under the name of a single person.

In several cases, more than three voter IDs had been issued under one person’s name.

The constituency is currently represented by the BJP. It is also the seat where the controversy first surfaced. Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi alleged that over one lakh fake or stolen votes had been systematically engineered in the area to manipulate the outcome of the 2024 Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha election.

Same EPIC number, two constituencies

Some voters now appear in the rolls under the same Elector’s Photo Identity Card (EPIC) number in two different constituencies. Those cases are not theoretical. They sit inside the final rolls.

Madhumita is one example. Her name appears in the final SIR rolls of both Mahadevapura (Part 180) and Hebbal (Part 62), carrying the same EPIC number in both places. Her father’s name and age are also the same in both entries.

Chaitra shows up in Mahadevapura (Part 90) and Dasarahalli (Part 251), again with the same EPIC number in both rolls.

At least seven such cases were found across constituencies, with the same EPIC number appearing against two entries in each case. Those seven numbers account for 14 entries in the final rolls. Three cases link Mahadevapura and Dasarahalli. Three link Mahadevapura and Sarvagnanagar. One links Mahadevapura and Hebbal.

Multiple voter IDs for one person

The problem also runs in the other direction. Some individuals have been issued multiple EPIC IDs, and the count gets striking fast.

Seven cases were found in which people held more than three voter IDs each. One of them involves a father and daughter, both with multiple IDs in Mahadevapura. Santosh Kumar, 63, has five voter IDs. Three sit in the same polling station (Part 232), and one each in Parts 233 and 234. His age, address and relatives’ names are identical across all five entries.

His daughter Kriti, 27, has two voter IDs, in Parts 232 and 234. Her details match in both entries, except that one does not mention the house number. Both entries list Santosh Kumar as her father.

The pattern goes well beyond one family. More than 500 cases were found in Mahadevapura where the same person had two or more voter IDs within a single polling station. Another 300 cases involved the same person holding multiple IDs across different polling stations in the constituency.

In Part 2, consecutive serial numbers 497 and 498 both list a man named Nithin, 18, with Prakash named as his father. The only visible difference is the house number. One entry lists it as 00 and the other as 025.

A deleted name that came back twice

One case shows how a deletion can end up producing a duplicate. Girija, 51, had her name deleted from the draft rolls. In the final rolls, she appears twice.

The Form 9 report, which consolidates Form 6 applications, shows she applied for inclusion on August 14 and again on September 18. Her name now figures in Parts 484 and 487. Both entries carry the address where she had been marked as ‘permanently shifted’, the very reason her name had been removed from the draft rolls.

What the election office says

The Office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) said it had received no formal complaints about duplicate entries. Its office said it was monitoring complaints flagged on social media and by political parties, and that the cases would be verified.

That answer leaves a gap. The duplicates are not hidden in a social media post or a rumour. They sit in the final rolls, with matching names, matching EPIC numbers, and in some cases identical ages and relatives. A process designed to clean up the rolls has, on this evidence, left Mahadevapura with hundreds of duplicate records. The verification promised by the CEO’s office has yet to show what it will find.

For a seat already at the centre of a bitter national argument over votes, the numbers alone are enough to keep the questions coming. Voters on both sides will want to know how many of these entries are errors, how many are fraud, and who is responsible for checking them before the next election.