Woman Pic In Rahul Gandhi's H-Bomb Clicked In 2017, Downloaded 4 Lakh Times

Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's much-awaited 'Hydrogen bomb' press conference, in which he made serious allegations of irregularities in the Haryana Assembly polls last year, has brought a mystery woman under the spotlight.

Gandhi alleged that the photograph of a Brazilian woman appears 22 times in the voter list for Haryana's Rai Assembly seat.

"Who is this lady? How old is she? Which state does she come from? What's her name? Can anyone try? Where is she from?" he asked the reporters at the press meet.

When someone in the audience pointed out that she does not appear to be from Haryana, Gandhi replied, "But she votes 22 times in Haryana, and she votes in 10 different booths in Haryana and she has got multiple names: Seema, Sweety, Saraswati, Rashmi, Vimla. This is a centralised operation. Somebody fed this lady into the electoral list at a centralised level, not at the booth level."

He then added, "She is from Brazil. She is a Brazilian model. That's a stock photograph."

The photograph, titled 'woman wearing blue denim jacket', is available for free download on websites such as stock photography websites Unsplash and Pexels. While the model is not named, the photographer is Matheus Ferrero, based in the Brazilian city, Belo Horizonte. The photograph is at least eight years old, as the Unsplash entry shows it was published on March 2, 2017. While it is likely that the model, too, is from Brazil, this is not confirmed. The photograph has been downloaded over 4 lakh times from these two websites.

As soon as Rahul Gandhi made the allegations, fake social media profiles with the woman's photograph and the name Matheus Ferrero started emerging. 

Citing another case of duplication, he pointed to the 100 voter IDs with the same woman's photograph in a single Assembly segment. "This lady gets to vote 100 times in Haryana if she feels like. This is to create space so that anybody can vote, so that BJP people can move, come from other states and vote," Gandhi said. The Congress leader showed another woman's photograph that appears 223 times in the voter list of two polling booths. "This is the reason the Election Commission destroys CCTV footage of booths," he alleged.

"The Election Commission can remove duplicates in a second. Why don't they do it? Reason: they are helping the BJP," he said, showing several instances of voter IDs with the same pictures but different names in the state's voter list.

Gandhi said all the exit polls had predicted a Congress victory in the Haryana election, but the results threw up a BJP win. He also showed a video of Nayab Singh Saini, BJP leader and Chief Minister, telling the media before the results that "arrangements" had been made and the BJP is winning the polls. "What were these arrangements? This is two days after the election, when everybody is saying that the Congress party is sweeping the election. This gentleman is very sure and smiling that the BJP has made arrangements," Gandhi said.

"I am questioning the Election Commission and the democratic process in India, and I am doing this with 100 per cent proof. We are sure that a plan was put in motion to convert Congress's landslide victory into a loss," he said.

Sources in the Election Commission questioned what polling agents of the Congress were doing on voting day. "They are supposed to object if the elector has already voted or if they doubt the identity of the elector," a source said. The source also asked if Rahul Gandhi supports the Special Intensive Revision aimed at removing duplication from voter lists and striking off names of those who have died or moved from a particular constituency.

Union Minister Kiren Rijiju said Rahul Gandhi talks about "fake issues". "Polling is happening in Bihar, yet he's telling stories about Haryana. There's nothing left in Bihar, so he's shifting the narrative to Haryana." The Leader of the Opposition, he said, should speak on serious issues.

"They say they were winning in exit polls and opinion polls. But there's always a difference between poll predictions and actual results. This keeps happening - it's nothing new. We never made any allegations against the Election Commission," he said. Rijiju said the BJP never raises questions when the Opposition parties win elections and asked why the Congress does not question results when it wins polls. He also accused Gandhi of trying to provoke the country's youth, but added that they are with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.