Tejashwi Yadav denies voter ID duplication, blames Patna officials for ‘changing EPIC number'
The leader of the opposition in the Bihar Assembly also claimed that "a good reply" was being drafted for the notice which was sent last week.
"I have received a notice not from the Election Commission but from the Patna district administration. A good reply is being drafted, and upon receipt, they would be left with nothing to say. They are trying to fault me for their own mistake. Whose lapse is it if two EPIC numbers have been issued in my name? After all, I have been casting my vote from only one place," said Yadav, the former deputy chief minister.
Notably, he had conducted an online search of his EPIC number in the draft electoral rolls last week, which yielded the result: "No records found".
Claiming that many other well-heeled persons, including senior bureaucrats, had their names struck off in the draft rolls published as part of the special intensive revision (SIR), Yadav had cast doubts on the efficacy of the exercise which, he has been alleging, was "an attempt to help the ruling BJP-led NDA in the upcoming assembly elections in the state".
The district administration in Patna had come out with a rebuttal of Yadav's allegation, sharing a screenshot of a portion of the draft electoral rolls in which names and photographs of the RJD leader, as also his father Lalu Prasad, the RJD president, could be seen.
However, Yadav stuck to his guns, charging the election authorities with "changing my EPIC number", even as the ruling NDA demanded that the RJD leader face trial for having two voter ID cards.
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