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The past week has been hectic for Kota Neelima, a member of the All India Congress Committee and Vice President of the Telangana Congress. On September 4, the Election Commission (EC) served her a notice, stating that she was registered as a voter in more than one constituency. For a politician who has been actively fighting for the purification of electoral rolls, the show cause notice was a surprise. Neelima was even more surprised that the EC chose to send her a notice a day after BJP members began raising allegations against her, even though the change of constituency had happened eight years prior.
Speaking to TNM, Neelima said she was disappointed and worried that an independent constitutional body like the Election Commission had become complicit in a political vendetta by the BJP.
The controversy began after Amit Malviya, the in-charge of BJP's Information and Technology Department, posted on X on September 3 that Neelima, along with her husband and senior Congress leader Pawan Khera, had two EPICs (Electors Photo Identity Card) one in Khairatabad, Telangana, and another in New Delhi. The next day, the Electoral Registration Officer of the New Delhi Assembly Constituency published a show cause notice addressed to Neelima on its X account, @ERO_ND40, asking her to file a reply by September 10. The post is now unavailable. It also issued a separate notice to Khera.
Neelima had filed a Form 6 for a change of constituency in 2017. She said that the Election Commission has woken up to the issue of duplicate votes only after the Congress raised pertinent questions on the purity of electoral rolls.
Neelima said it was a shock to her that all information regarding them holding two EPIC cards came through the BJP's IT cell. “We have had new voting cards for the last eight years. How is it possible that our names are still in the Delhi list if our application for a change of constituency was acknowledged by the EC back then? How did the BJP know that our names were not shifted?” she asked.
Neelima said that the incident has vindicated what Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had been saying in his 'Vote Chori' campaign. “This means that BJP is the one that informs the Election Commission about your vote and my vote. All details about how many voter IDs anyone has, where they have them, and the number of duplicate voters are all known to the BJP,” she said.
Apart from the duplicate vote allegation, Neelima was taken aback by the way the EC issued her the show cause notice by making her residential address public on X.
Neelima said she replied to the notice on time but has not received any response from the EC yet. She is taking legal advice on how to proceed.
In his X post, Malviya had criticised that Rahul Gandhi, without adequate due diligence, targeted and tarnished honest voters while remaining silent on the multiple voter IDs of his close aides. When asked about the individuals with multiple EPIC numbers mentioned by Rahul in his press conference, Neelima asked whether the EC had served them a show cause notice as it did in her case.