Nagpur: Revenue minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule on Thursday launched a sharp counterattack on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi‘s allegations of duplicate names in the state’s voter list, calling them ‘absurd’ and politically motivated. “Rahul Gandhi should first study the state’s voter lists before making such foolish claims. Duplicate names aren’t new; they exist everywhere. In Kamptee, Congress-MVA candidate Suresh Bhoyar — who contested against me in the 2024 assembly polls — himself has a duplicate entry. Why doesn’t Rahul see that?” Bawankule asked.The guardian minister dismissed Gandhi’s charge as “a desperate attempt to create confusion” ahead of the upcoming civic elections. “Even if a name appears twice, only one person can vote since indelible ink is applied. The same voter list elected 31 MPs of the MVA, but now after losing the assembly polls, they are calling it faulty. This is a pathetic effort to spread a fake narrative,” he remarked.Bawankule accused Gandhi and the opposition of lacking any positive agenda. “In the last nine months, they haven’t presented a single constructive idea. Rahul Gandhi keeps attacking the Election Commission and the Supreme Court, playing the same old, worn-out cassette. He’s restless because he knows that the NDA under Modi will rule till 2047,” he said.Turning his fire on Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray, Bawankule termed him a “penless chief minister”. “In my 22 years of politics, I’ve seen many CMs, but Uddhav Thackeray was the only one who never carried a pen. He wouldn’t sign MLAs’ letters for months; that’s why his legislators deserted him. He barely visited Mantralaya during his two-and-a-half-year tenure,” he alleged.He dismissed Thackeray’s ongoing Marathwada tour as a purely political exercise. “It’s an off-season tour driven by electoral motives. As chief minister, he never visited farmers’ fields or cared about flood relief. He doesn’t even know what assistance victims receive. He’s touring only to criticise Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis,” Bawankule said, in a statement released to the media.
