The Election Commission of India on Thursday told the Supreme Court that Congress leader Kamal Nath was using fabricated documents sourced from a private company to malign the poll panel’s image with fabricated documents from a private company, PTI reported. The top court was hearing a plea filed by Congress leader Kamal Nath who had submitted documents published on a website to claim that there are a large number of duplicate voters on electoral rolls in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Vikas Singh, representing the poll panel, said somebody needed to be held accountable for the alleged fabricated data. “Some private company called ‘politics.in’ has published the data of voters with pictures which the Election Commission of India does not do,” Singh said. “The petitioner has submitted the data relying on such fabricated documents to get a favourable order.”

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A bench of Justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan said it will consider summoning representatives from the private company.

Nath’s lawyer Kapil Sibal claimed that his submission of the documents were valid and that they had been given to Chief Election Commissioner OP Rawat previously. The court asked the poll panel’s legal counsel to confirm by October 8 if the documents had indeed been given to Rawat before the court proceedings.

In June, the Congress had submitted a complaint to the poll panel, alleging there were over 60 lakh duplicate voters on the rolls in Madhya Pradesh. Later, the party alleged that there were 42 lakh such cases in Rajasthan too. Assembly elections will take place in both states this year. The Congress sought an inquiry, and in his petition, Nath sought random verification of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail machines in the elections in Madhya Pradesh.

In an earlier hearing, the Election Commission had told the Supreme Court it had always upheld the integrity and purity of the electoral process and was committed to holding “free and fair elections”. It sought the dismissal of the two petitions.