New Delhi: The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Uttar Pradesh lashed out against AltNews co-founder and fact checker Mohamma Zubair over multiple voter IDs issued to the same voter.A sharply-worded X post from the CEO’s official handle said, “Mr Fact-checker please fact-check your own facts. There is no such scheme as “Buy one Get one free” scheme by Election Commission…You are advised to rectify your mistake by amending or deleting your post after completing your own due diligence now that you have been informed by us about your wrong information.”Several X users pointed out the unprofessional tone and wording of the message, deemed unbecoming of a government official. “”Mr Fact Checker”. Official handle replying in tone of a troll or party handle. Elections are fair guys,” an X user said.‘Gems of UP SIR’In an X post on October 17, Zubair had pointed out that several voters whose names were missing from the draft electoral roll, and who had subsequently submitted Form 6 for inclusion in the voter list, had been issued multiple voter IDs.“Gems of UP SIR! Several voters whose names were missing from the draft electoral roll (jan 6th) submitted Form 6 for inclusion. In some cases, two applications were submitted for the same person and the Election Commission went ahead and issued four voter IDs. In plain words: One person applied twice. The EC gave them four voter IDs. Buy one get one free! There are several such cases,” the post said.Responding to Zubair’s post, the UP CEO said that the information was incorrect and that the voter had submitted four applications, not two.“As per your post, the voter had submitted only two applications and he got 4 EPIC cards. This statement is false. The voter had submitted 4 applications. If you want to dispute our facts then you post the reference numbers of two applications that you claim he had submitted and we will post the reference number of the remaining two,” the UP CEO said.Acknowledging the issue of multiple EPICs on submission of multiple forms of an individual, the UP CEO said that the issue was “a long standing one”. “We do deduplication through ECINET periodically. We are on path to achieving the objective of catching multiple forms submitted by an individual at the submission stage only. We will achieve our objective very soon. Please do not incite people by making patently false statements about ECI and thereby trying to create disaffection among the citizens towards a Constitutional Body,” the CEO said.The CEO’s response was widely criticised online, with many saying that such duplications had added to the mockery of the SIR exercise, which was meant to clean the voter list. “Your system can flag an age gap of less than 15 years or more than 50 years between a parent and a child, but it can’t detect four Form 6 applications from the same person in the same parliamentary constituency?” another X user said.