The Election Commission on Friday said that it would solve the problem of duplicate voter identity numbers having been issued in different states within three months by ensuring a unique national EPIC number to all voters.
EPIC, or the Electors Photo Identification Card, is issued by the Election Commission and serves as identification proof for Indian citizens over the age of 18 to cast their vote in elections. The EPIC number is the voter ID card number.
The poll panel said that its sample enquiry of more than 100 electors had revealed that electors with duplicate EPIC numbers were “genuine electors”.
“Since the allotment of EPIC series in the year 2000 to the States/UTs, some EROs [Electoral Registration Officers] did not use the correct series,” it said in a statement. “The issue of allotment of duplicate numbers due to incorrect series across States/UTs could not have been detected as the States/UTs were independently managing the electoral roll databases.”
It also claimed that irrespective of the duplication, voters cannot cast their ballots in constituencies other than their own.
On February 27, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of colluding with the Election Commission to add fake voters to electoral lists in order to win the recent Assembly elections in Delhi and Maharashtra.
She accused the Hindutva party of hiring two agencies, Association of Billion Minds and India 360, to allegedly add residents of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana to the voter list in West Bengal.
West Bengal will head for Assembly polls in 2026.
On March 2, the poll panel responded to the allegations saying the duplication of voter ID numbers issued in different states did not imply that fake voters had been added to electoral rolls. The allotment of the same number to more than one voter was a result of states using the same alphanumeric series, it added.
The Election Commission had said: “…while EPIC numbers of some of the electors may be identical, the other details including demographic details, Assembly constituency and polling booth are different for the electors with the same EPIC number.”
The poll panel said that electors can cast their vote only at the designated polling station in their registered constituencies, irrespective of their EPIC number.
“The allotment of identical EPIC number/series to some electors from different States/UTs was due to a decentralised and manual mechanism being followed prior to shifting of the electoral roll database of all States/UTs to the ERONET platform,” it had said.
ERONET is a common web-based system used by electoral officials in all states and Union Territories to manage election processes.
“This resulted in certain State/UT CEO [chief electoral officer] offices using the same EPIC alphanumeric series and leaving a scope for the possibility of duplicate EPIC numbers being allotted to electors in different Assembly Constituencies in different States/UTs,” the commission had said.
Also read: Voter rolls, not just EVMs: How Opposition is coming to a new understanding on BJP’s alleged rigging
EC forced to admit mistake, says Congress
The Congress on Friday said that it “rejects the feeble and duplicitous” explanation provided by the Election Commission and reiterated its demands for the poll panel “to come clean on the sanctity of voter lists”.
“The Election Commission, in a letter issued on September 18, 2008, to chief electoral officers of all states, had said that ‘voter-IDs are unique’,” the Opposition party said. “However, the ECI today says the issue of duplicate voter-IDs is a ‘decades-long issue’. Which statement of the ECI should the citizens of India believe? Why should an average Indian voter today trust the Election Commission?”
Trinamool Congress MP Saket Gokhale said that the poll panel’s statement was an admission of guilt.
“After being in denial, ECI now says it will ‘fix the issue’ in just 3 months,” the Rajya Sabha MP said. “It has also given a very UNCONVINCING explanation that ‘this duplication of EPIC has happened since the year 2000 due to registration officers using incorrect alphanumeric series’”.
Gokhale further asked details about how many duplicate voter IDs are in existence.
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