'Ram ne Sharma ko maara': EC orders scrutiny of UP voter list after bizarre entries

Amid several discrepancies in voter rolls across Uttar Pradesh, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has put under mandatory scrutiny all names added, deleted or amended in the voter list across Uttar Pradesh through Forms 6 (registration), 7 (deletion), and 8 (correction of entries) fed by computer assistants in all 403 assembly constituencies of the state after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process ended on April 10. The anomalies in electoral rolls particularly in districts like Pilibhit and Azamgarh has gone viral for featuring a series of bizarre and highly unusual names.

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The ECI has also banned computer assistants from feeding forms related to the electoral rolls. All forms received physically from voters will be digitised by the booth level officer (BLO) through the BLO App. Uttar Pradesh chief electoral officer (CEO) Navdeep Rinwa said all the divisional commissioners have been made electoral roll observers. UP’s electoral roll declined from 15.44 crore voters in the list published on October 27, 2025, to 13.39 crore in the final roll published on April 10 following the SIR.

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UP CEC also issued a statement

The UP CEC also issued a statement said that the reasons for such mistakes are being “looked into and appropriate action is being taken to prevent any reoccurrence.” “It is being informed that some forged voter slips have also become viral which are being displayed/mentioned by many established media outlets and prominent persons. The person responsible for the forgery will be dealt with as per law. It is requested that before quoting/displaying/publishing as a fact, anything shared by someone on social media regarding the voter list , it may be proper to verify it from the concerned officials. Our officials would promptly respond to any factual query,” the CEC added.

What are the bizarre names?

Massive controversy broke out when the electoral rolls for the Allahabad-Jhansi graduate constituency featured voter names as “Ram ne Yadav ko maara” (Ram hit Yadav) and “Ram ne Sharma ko maara” (Ram hit Sharma). Several leaders on social media questioned if the Election Commission's computers were carrying a deeply "casteist" agenda targeting specific communities. Refuting allegations of a targeted bias, the UP CEO office explicitly stated on social media that "the computer/software is not casteist." To prove the point that these were system translation anomalies rather than community-based discrimination, the poll body shared a screenshot of another error from the Allahabad-Jhansi voter lists where the father's name was recorded as "Ram ne Sharma ko mara" (Ram killed Sharma).

In other entries, academic credentials like “B.Com” were listed in place of a voter's father's name. One of the entry showed 'Murkh Chand Yadav' as a parental detail for one of the corrupted entries. In Azamgarh, the name "Vikas Yadav" appeared 13 times on the rolls. The election body stated, "Our mistake is accepted, but fortunately, there was no caste discrimination when the error occurred."