Just 4 days before the assembly elections in Assam, Congress leader Pawan Khera tried to create a controversy around CM Himanta Biswa Sarma's family by claiming that Riniki Bhuyan Sharma, wife of the Chief Minister, holds three foreign passports.

In a press conference held in Delhi, Khera claimed that she has passports from the UAE, Egypt and Antigua and Barbuda. However, both the CM and his wife have denied the claims, saying that they will file criminal and civil defamation cases against Khera for 'malicious, fabricated, and politically motivated lies'.

The documents in question, one UAE identity card misrepresented as a passport and two supposed passports from Antigua & Barbuda and Egypt, were presented by Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera during the press conference as evidence of dual or multiple citizenship.

CM Himanta Biswa Sarma and Assam BJP have said that the 'passports' shown by Congress in the press conference are fake, and have pointed out several specifications that show that these are not genuine documents. In a series of posts on X, Himanta Biswa Sarma described the materials as "poorly executed" fakes riddled with inconsistencies that no genuine official document would contain.

Here is a point-by-point breakdown of the discrepancies, as highlighted by CM Himanta Biswa Sarma:

Surname Mismatch

Every single "passport/ID" uses the spelling Riniki Bhuyan Sarma. However, the official and correct spelling of her surname is Sharma. It can be assumed because the spelling of CM's surname is Sarma, Congress also assumed that his wife's surname is also written as Sarma. But actually, she uses the spelling Sharma.

In Assam, various spellings of this surname are used, including Sarma, Sharma, Sharmah, Sarmah, etc. While the CM's wife's maiden name was Riniki Bhuyan, she chose to use the more common spelling Sharma after her marriage to Himanta Biswa Sarma.

This fundamental error appears in the name fields of all three documents from the UAE, Antigua & Barbuda, and Egypt. No authentic government-issued travel document would contain such a basic misspelling of the holder's legal name.

Here is the copy of the affidavit submitted by CM Sarma for the ongoing elections, it clearly mentions his wife's name as Riniki Bhuyan Sharna.

Photograph Appears to Be a Publicly Available Image

CM Himanta Biswa Sarma noted that the photographs seen in the documents presented by the Congress party appears to be publicly available photos, not standard biomatrix capture. His claim appears to be correct, as the photographs do not match standard passport photos.

UAE Document not Passport, DoB and country mismatch

The document presented as the UAE passport is actually not even a passport, it is a Golden Visa card, a long-term residence visa. It can be easily seen that it is a card with a chip, and not a passport.

Notably, the printed Date of Birth on the card is 31/07/1973. However, as per the ID Number, the year of birth should be 1996. As per the format of the UAE ID number, this ID belongs to someone born in 1996. Because, in the 15-digit ID number, the first three digits 784 represent the country code of the UAE. The 4 digits after that show the year of birth of the cardholder, followed by a seven-digit unique identifier, and a final check digit.

As the ID number is 784-1996-5557498-8, the birth year should be 1996.

The card says "Nationality: Egypt" in English and Arabic, yet the MRZ code on the back of the card reflects a different country code structure. The MRZ code is ILARE1326077316784199655574988 7307317F1710272ATG<<<<<<<<<<03 BHUYANSARMA<<<<<<<<<<<<, where ATG is the nationality code. ATG refers to Antigua and Barbuda, but the card mentions nationality as Egypt.

Moreover, the check digit for this data should be 5, but the mentioned check digit is 3, which means the numbers in the MRZ code were manually changed, and it does not pass the algorithm check.

The MRZ code for passports and country ID cards are system generated, genuine codes can't contain such grave errors.

Egyptian Passport

The Egyptian passport also contains a big error. In the main part, the document shows nationality as Egyptian, but it does not match the nationality encoded in the MRZ code. The code on the passport is PPEGYBHUYAN<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< A207998834IND7307317F2902120<<<<<<<<<<<<<<08, and here the letters IND after the passport number indicate that nationality is Indian. The same passport can't mention two different nationalities, because the MRZ code is system-generated from available information.

CM Sarma has already said that he and his wife will file both criminal and civil defamation cases within the next 48 hours against Pawan Khera. He said, "I categorically reject every allegation made by him. These are malicious, fabricated, and politically motivated lies aimed at misleading the people of Assam."

The CM said that once the truth is established in a court of law, Pawan Khera will face the consequences of his actions, and the law will take its due course.

Riniki Bhuyan responded to the allegations, saying that she "expected a spokesperson of a national party to exercise basic due diligence, rather than circulate poorly fabricated images of imaginary passports and documents." She added, "I will now be letting the law take over. Criminal charges are being initiated. We can continue this in court," implying that she and her husband are moving ahead with filing the defamation case.

However, the assembly election in Assam will take place on 9th April, and the case may not be even listed in court if it is filed within next two days. Therefore, the purpose of Congress party appears to be to create doubts among voters, even if they are using forged documents. They know that it will take years to prove them wrong, and their purpose will be served by that time.