Who is the 'Brazilian model' named in Rahul Gandhi's presser on Haryana election 'vote chori'?

The photograph is at least eight years old, as the Unsplash entry shows it was published on March 2, 2017.

Claiming that the 2024 Assembly elections in Haryana had been “stolen”, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi claimed that a Brazilian model’s photo appeared multiple times on voter cards.

While displaying the picture, Gandhi asked the journalists and other people gathered there for the presser, "Who is this lady? What is her name? Where does she come from?"

According to him, she voted 22 times in Haryana, at 10 different booths, and had “multiple names: Seema, Sweety, Saraswati, Rashmi, Vilma”.

“One fake photo is used in a single assembly segment to cast 100 votes… This is to create space for BJP people to come from other states and vote,” Gandhi alleged, adding that this was why the Election Commission refused to release CCTV footage from polling booths.

Who is the Brazilian woman?

Gandhi also mentioned Matheus Ferrero, the photographer who clicked the image, along with a QR code leading to the stock image website Unsplash. According to reports, Matheus Ferrero is 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. However, there was no confirmation about the woman’s location or name. The photograph on the Unsplash profile was named with the title “woman wearing blue denim jacket”.

According to Gandhi, she represents one case among a total of 25 lakh stolen votes, which includes 19.26 lakh bulk voters, 5.21 lakh duplicate voters, and 93,174 invalid voters.

In the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections, the BJP won 48 seats out of 90 and Nayab Singh Saini became the chief minister.

Citing another case of duplication, Gandhi also 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 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 Haryana, but the BJP won. "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.