Congress leader Rahul Gandhi recently levelled massive allegations on the integrity of the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the fairness of elections during a press conference in Delhi. Harping on his same old diatribe about the ECI acting in collusion with the BJP and rigging elections in favour of the ruling party, Gandhi presented some electoral data, which he claimed was collated during an “internal survey” of his party, to support his allegations.
The Congress scion presented the electoral rolls of Karnataka and alleged that a massive vote theft took place in the constituency because his party won fewer seats than expected. Gandhi displayed what he claimed were the electoral rolls of Mahadevapura in Karnataka’s Bangalore Central constituency, which the Congress lost to the BJP. He claimed that his party analysed the Mahadevapura electoral rolls over 6 months and found that of 1,00,250 alleged bogus voters, 40,009 had “fake and invalid addresses” and 10,452 were “bulk voters” registered at common addresses.
He pointed out voter entries with house numbers marked as ‘0’ and voters registered at the same house number to allege that the ECI had added fake voters in the voter list to rig elections in favour of the BJP.
Notably, some media reports later pointed out the same pattern in the electoral rolls of Rahul Gandhi’s own constituency, Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh. The voter list there also has a large number of entries with “House Number 0” and even clusters of dozens of voters registered at the same address.
Why the ECI allots ‘0’ house numbers to voters
‘House Number 0’ and multiple voters registered at the same residential addresses are not fake votes, as claimed by the Leader of the Opposition. The Election Commission often assigns ‘House Number 0’ or ‘notional addresses’ to include voters without well-defined or permanent residential addresses, such as homeless people, those whose houses have no official numbering, or those who failed to enter their full addresses in electoral forms.
Similarly, multiple voters having the same residential addresses can be found in cases of joint families, shared housing or rented accommodations, particularly in rural and semi-urban areas.
Videos of several such voters have emerged, who have voter ID cards with House Number 0 mentioned in the address fields. These voters have explained that they are living in their places for 10-15 years, and have valid voters IDs. The voters said that as their houses were not numbers, ECI officials 0 in place of house number in their voter IDs. They also displayed their Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) mentioning house number 0 in the address field.
Rahul Gandhi cited several voters with house number 0 as proofs of “vote theft”. Now, several voters with house number 0 in their voter IDs have spoken out. Their houses have no numbers, so ECI officials used 0.
(Original videos, and AI-translated videos using @HeyGenLabs) pic.twitter.com/tkk3goNwwg
— OpIndia.com (@OpIndia_com) August 13, 2025
A woman in the video can be heard saying that she is being harassed for having house number 0 in their voter cards.
With a vast population comprising people who constantly migrate within the country for various reasons, mostly for job opportunities, maintaining fixed or standardised addresses poses a challenge for the authorities. The problem was highlighted by the Department of Posts in May this year in its policy document, wherein it proposed the creation of digital public infrastructure to standardise addresses. “Despite the centrality of address information in everyday life, frictions exist in how such data is managed, shared and used across India,” the policy document reportedly stated.
Speaking to The Indian Express, some current and former Election Commission officials said the that the in cases where voters lack proper addresses of leave the field blank, they are assigned “notional” addresses to ensure that they are not excluded from the electoral rolls. Election Commission instructions, which date back to 2011, reportedly direct the allocation of addresses in such a manner. These addresses are clearly marked as “notional” in the electoral roll. The instructions were followed in the recent Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar, as well as in the poll-bound states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana, in May 2023.
The officials further added that the practice of notional addresses, which arises from the ECI’s policy of inclusion, not exclusion, is followed across the country. Citing the example of homeless persons, the EC officials said that the guidelines instruct the Booth Level Officers (BLOs) to verify the address given in Form 6 at night by checking on multiple occasions to confirm that the person sleeps at the given location. In such cases, if the address of a homeless person is verified in this manner, no documentary proof of residence is needed.
According to The Indian Express, a 2011 Election Commission instructed the BLOs that where house numbers have been assigned by the Municipality, those should be used as they also appear on Electors Photo Identity Cards (EPICs) that double as address proof for other government schemes. However, where no official house numbers exist, BLOs are instructed to assign notional numbers to houses starting from 1 in each section. These notional numbers are computer-generated and do not mandatorily match the numbers allotted by the municipality. Oftentimes, municipalities allot ‘0’ as house numbers in illegal colonies to avoid conferring legal status.