U.P. Chief Electoral Officer apologises for ‘tone, language and sharpness’ of social media posts

The office of the Chief Electoral Officer of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday (October 27, 2026) apologised over the “tone” and tenor of social media posts made by the poll body, following a row over the acerbic nature of the remarks, which pertained to erroneous voter slip entries.

The controversy began when Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MP Sanjay Singh questioned Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar over an erroneous entry, where ‘Ramhit Yadav’ became ‘Ram ne Yadav ko Maara’ (Ram hit Yadav) in the voter list of the recent Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council election.

U.P. Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa’s office attributed the error to a translation software glitch. The software used to prepare voter lists was designed to transliterate names entered in English into Hindi, which led to ‘Ramhit Yadav’ being incorrectly entered as ‘Ram Hit Yadav’. The software interpreted the words as a sentence and translated it to “Ram ne Yadav ko Maara” in Hindi.

Mr. Singh had questioned the CEC on whether the latter was running the agenda for a particular political party. “Gyanesh Kumar, why did Ram hit only a Yadav? Why did Ram not hit any Singh, Pathak, Asthana, Sharma, Rai or Bisht? Is your computer casteist? Are you running the agenda of any political party?” the AAP leader said in a post on social media platform X.

In an acerbic response, Mr. Rinwa’s office cited another instance of a similar error, where the name of the father of a voter, Ravi Sharma, was incorrectly recorded as “Ram ne Sharma ko Maara”.

“A bizarre name, ‘Ram ne Sharma ko maara’, has appeared in the voter list for the recent Legislative Council elections. Computers/software are not casteist. We admit that a mistake was made, but fortunately for us, even when the mistake occurred, caste discrimination was not involved,” Mr. Rinwa’s office said.

This was followed by another mocking remark by Mr. Rinwa’s office, which said that had the entry read “Ram hit a minority”, the authorities would have been accused of communalism too. “Thank God, Ram did not kill a member of a minority community. Otherwise, we would have been accused of being communal as well as casteist,” the remark read.

The AAP MP was quick to hit back. On Monday (October 26, 2026), he held a press conference in Lucknow, alleging that the U.P. Chief Electoral Officer was responding like an “agent of the BJP”. He also flagged other absurd entries in the electoral rolls, and sought strict action against Mr. Rinwa for the objectionable remarks.

On Tuesday (October 27, 2026), however, Mr. Rinwa’s office issued an apology. “The tone, language and sharpness of the comments in the quoted post from this handle are not in keeping with the kind of communication expected from an official handle,” the apology posted to X said.

“The genuine outrage sparked by the comments in the post has been duly noted. We sincerely apologise to those who have been shocked and angered by them. From now on, our communication will be civil and formal,” Mr. Rinwa’s office said.