When Congress leader Rahul Gandhi claimed that a “Brazilian woman’s photo appeared 22 times across 10 polling booths” in Haryana’s Rai constituency, it immediately ignited a political storm. His allegation of “centralised manipulation for vote chori” prompted India Today to investigate the claim on the ground. Over two days, reporters visited Machroli and neighbouring villages within the Rai Assembly constituency to verify the claim. The findings revealed a more nuanced picture than either side of the political divide suggested — one marked not by a coordinated fraud, but by clerical errors, outdated records, and gaps in voter data management.
In multiple villages, India Today found six separate voter entries bearing the same photo of the Brazilian model at the centre of the controversy. In two of these cases, residents themselves confirmed that the mismatched photos were the result of simple printing errors, not deliberate manipulation. Pinky, a voter from Machroli, explained that her voter ID card had been misprinted with another woman’s photograph when she applied for it after moving from Delhi. “We reported the mistake immediately, but the corrected copy never came. I still voted using my Aadhaar card and voter slip,” she said. Her brother-in-law dismissed the controversy as “political propaganda,” blaming the local election office for technical mistakes rather than any organised tampering.
Munish’s family shared a similar account. Her brother-in-law told India Today that her photograph had been mismatched on a previous voter slip but was corrected before polling day. “She cast her own vote. The mistake was in the document, not in the process,” he said, calling it an operator error. These two testimonies contradicted claims of large-scale manipulation, instead pointing to administrative lapses and local data-entry faults.
But not every finding could be so easily explained. In one case, the name of a voter named Guniya, who died in 2022, still appeared in the 2024 voter roll — paired again with the Brazilian model’s photo. Her mother-in-law produced a death certificate as proof, saying, “She’s been gone for years, so we don’t know how her name and photo are still in the list.” This pointed to a failure in regularly updating voter records after deaths, a persistent problem across rural India.
In another household, India Today found a duplicate entry under one woman’s name. Bimla, a voter from Rai, had two IDs — one genuine and another with the same name and address but a different EPIC number and photo of the Brazilian model. Her son, Pradeep, called the duplication “a fraudulent act” and demanded an inquiry. “You can see the records. Both entries have the same address and family details, but my mother’s real photo and EPIC number appear only once. The other one is fake,” he said, lending some credibility to Rahul Gandhi’s accusation of data manipulation.
A fifth case showed a different kind of administrative failure. Saroj, whose name appeared on the voter roll with the same Brazilian model’s photo, had moved to Bhiwani years ago after marriage and registered there as a voter. Her family was shocked to find her still listed in Rai. “She hasn’t voted here since 2001,” said her sister. “How can her name still exist here if she’s already registered in another district?” This again highlighted how outdated records and a lack of inter-district coordination contribute to duplicate entries.
Taken together, these five verified examples reflected a pattern of inefficiency rather than conspiracy. Two were confirmed as photo misprints, one was a dead voter still active in the database, one was a duplicate entry, and one was a case of outdated registration after migration. None of the affected voters reported being unable to cast their ballot, but the presence of duplicate and inaccurate records exposes structural flaws that could, in theory, be exploited.
Officials at the Sonipat district election office privately admitted that mismatched photos and duplicate entries could result from “operator-level mistakes” during digitisation and migration of data. They confirmed that an internal review was underway to identify and correct such errors. Election experts noted that such problems often arise when voter data from local systems is merged into central databases without full synchronization. Unreported deaths, migration after marriage, and weak verification processes further compound the issue, allowing outdated or erroneous entries to persist.
While Rahul Gandhi’s sweeping charge of “vote chori” may not stand fully validated, India Today’s ground investigation points to a different kind of vulnerability — one born not of political conspiracy, but of bureaucratic decay. The repeated use of the “Brazilian woman’s photo” across multiple voter IDs symbolises not a rigged election, but a crumbling data system struggling to manage the world’s largest electoral roll. In the end, what emerged from Rai was not proof of a stolen vote, but a reminder that in India’s democracy, even small administrative cracks can quickly turn into political earthquakes.
