Tejashwi Yadav accused Bihar Deputy CM Vijay Sinha of being a voter from two constituencies. Responding to him, Sinha rubbished the allegations.
A new political scandal has broken out in Bihar just before the 2025 Assembly polls as RJD leader and Bihar Assembly Leader of Opposition Tejashwi Yadav claimed that Deputy Chief Minister Vijay Kumar Sinha holds two Elector Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) with varying information, raising grave doubts on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI).
Tejashwi Yadav charged Vijay Kumar Sinha with two voter IDs registered in two constituencies — Lakhisarai and Bankipur. He pointed out that information on the Election Commission's website indicated Sinha with two different EPIC numbers, with a difference in ages as well: 57 years in one card and 60 years in another. Yadav called it a gigantic fraud or failure and wondered if the Election Commission's SIR process was defunct or if Sinha himself had committed malpractice.
"The new voter list, which was shown to the district presidents of all parties, clearly indicates this discrepancy. Who has done this fraud? The Election Commission or the Deputy Chief Minister?" Yadav asked in a press conference in Patna.
Rebutting the charges, Vijay Kumar Sinha categorically denied the charges. He explained his name was initially in the Bankipur constituency voter list but he filed an application in April 2024 to get his name added to the Lakhisarai voter list and at the same time sought deletion from Bankipur. Due to administrative inefficiency, his name remained on both the lists for some time.
“I vote from only one place—Lakhisarai—and have all necessary documentation supporting this,” Sinha asserted. He accused Tejashwi Yadav of playing political games to divert attention from his own controversies and stated, “We don’t indulge in such frauds or manipulations.”
The charges are made in the backdrop of heightened political heat over the Special Intensive Revision drill to refresh voters' rolls in Bihar ahead of the state assembly polls. The Opposition, led by RJD and Congress leaders, has denounced the SIR process vociferously, charging several shortcomings including missing names, duplicates, and omission of opposition leaders. Tejashwi Yadav himself had previously asserted his name was absent from the draft rolls, which the Election Commission refuted by presenting the list indicating his inclusion.
The allegation that Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Vijay Kumar Sinha possesses two EPIC cards with conflicting information has raised a new controversy, indicative of the tense political situation in Bihar before the elections. With both sides levelling charges against each other, this problem raises questions about the integrity of electoral rolls and the efficiency of the voter list revision process in Bihar on a larger canvas.
