A single house in Haryana’s Hodal town has become the unlikely centre of a national political controversy after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi claimed that 501 voters were registered under one address. The allegation, made during his recent press conference on alleged voter fraud in Haryana, has sparked sharp political sparring between the Congress and the ruling BJP. However, a visit to the location revealed a far less sensational reality — a clerical error in data entry rather than a case of systematic electoral manipulation.
House No. 265, located in Ward No. 21 of Hodal town, belongs to Sundar Singh, a local BJP leader and former municipal councillor. Gandhi’s team cited this address as evidence of widespread irregularities in voter registration, calling it “proof” of a deliberate attempt to inflate voter lists. Yet, when reporters and election officials visited the spot, they found that nearly every home in the surrounding area had been mistakenly assigned the same house number due to a data-entry mix-up by the Booth Level Officer (BLO).
“We have five homes here — mine, my brothers’, and my cousins’,” Sundar Singh explained. “But all of them have been listed under House No. 265 in the electoral roll. Even some of our relatives living on the next lane have the same number mentioned. It’s a clerical mistake, nothing else.” He acknowledged, however, that some voters in the locality might have duplicate registrations, having retained entries in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh even after moving to Haryana. “That issue should be taken seriously,” he said.
Local residents confirmed that they are legitimate voters and that their inclusion under one address was the result of “administrative oversight.” Many said their Aadhaar cards carry different addresses, but the electoral list mistakenly groups them all under House No. 265. According to a municipal worker familiar with the area’s records, the numbering confusion likely occurred when older voter data was digitised without adequate verification.
Following the uproar, the Palwal district administration ordered a door-to-door verification drive to check every entry in the voter list of Ward No. 21. Booth Level Officers were instructed to visit each home personally, cross-check documents, and correct any inconsistencies in the official records. Officials stated that corrections would be completed before the next electoral revision cycle.
The controversy erupted after Rahul Gandhi alleged that Haryana’s electoral rolls contained widespread anomalies, claiming that “one in every eight voters” in the state was fake. He said his team had found “25 lakh fake votes” and accused the BJP of orchestrating a “planned operation to subvert democracy.” Gandhi also warned that similar “vote theft” could occur in upcoming state elections in Bihar.
The Election Commission, however, dismissed these claims, saying that the electoral rolls in Haryana were regularly updated through standard verification procedures and that no formal appeals or objections had been filed. Officials also clarified that only 22 election-related petitions were currently pending before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, suggesting no systemic irregularities in the state’s voter lists.
While the Congress continues to stand by its claims of “vote chori,” the findings from Hodal underline how administrative errors in voter registration can quickly escalate into major political controversies. What began as a technical glitch in numbering has now become a flashpoint in the broader narrative of electoral integrity — a subject that both ruling and opposition parties are likely to exploit in the run-up to the next election season.
