New Delhi, Sep 2: Congress leader Pawan Khera hit back at the BJP on Tuesday after it alleged that he had two voter IDs, saying in a bid to target him and his party, it has ended up targeting the Election Commission (EC) and left it “bleeding”.
Khera claimed that with his “morning stunt”, BJP’s IT department head Amit Malviya has “conceded” that the EC has “failed to maintain the integrity” of the electoral rolls.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had alleged that Khera had two voter IDs and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was running a campaign against voter-roll revision in Bihar to “protect and hide” his party’s “theft of votes”.
In a post on X, Malviya said Gandhi screamed “vote chori” from the rooftops but just like “he forgot to mention that his mother, Sonia Gandhi, enlisted herself in India’s voter list even before becoming an Indian citizen, it has now emerged that Khera, a Congress spokesperson — who never misses a chance to flaunt his proximity to the Gandhis — holds two active EPIC numbers”.
Reacting to Malviya’s post, Khera said, “I came to know from him only that I have a second EPIC card. I had applied to remove it in 2016-17, but it seems that did not happen and the EC is to be blamed for this.”
“What Anurag Thakur did, Amit Malviya replicated — they both wanted to target us, but ended up targeting the EC. This is the issue we have been raising, this is what Rahul Gandhi is saying. Now I want to know if my vote was misused in Delhi and went to the BJP. I want CCTV footage,” the Congress leader told PTI Videos.
Later, in a post on X, Khera said, “Desperate for attention, Amit Malviya tried a shot at me but much to his dismay, it is the ECI that was left bleeding. Again.”
“Few takeaways: After Rahul Gandhi’s August 7 press conference, thousands of cases surfaced where the same or different EPIC IDs for one person are registered in multiple booths, constituencies, even states. Malviya showed no particular interest in those cases. So, it is not the integrity of the electoral rolls that he is concerned about. It is politically-motivated mudslinging,” he said.
With his “morning stunt”, Malviya has conceded that the EC has “failed to maintain the integrity” of the electoral rolls, he added.
“This is despite my Form 7 application to delete my name from the New Delhi constituency after shifting houses in 2016,” Khera said.
“Since 2016, four elections — 2019 Lok Sabha, 2020 Vidhan Sabha, 2024 Lok Sabha, 2025 Vidhan Sabha — have gone by. So it is safe to assume that four ‘revisions’ must have also taken place. Yet, my name is still on New Delhi rolls. Which stone has the ECI been sleeping under?” he said.
“(Chief Election Commissioner) Gyanesh Gupta Ji should pick his allies wisely — after Anurag Thakur, Amit Malviya too has found it convenient to toss him under the bus,” Khera said.
Earlier, addressing a press conference at the BJP headquarters here, the party’s national spokesperson, Pradeep Bhandari, claimed that Khera, the Congress’s media department head and Gandhi’s “close associate”, had two voter IDs on Delhi addresses.
“Rahul Gandhi and his close associates are chor (thieves) and making shor (noise),” Bhandari said. (PTI)
