The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Friday said that it would address the issue of duplicate EPIC cards issued to voters over the next three months. The poll panel said it will also ensure a unique Voter ID for the existing electors which are having duplicate EPIC number and for the future electors as well. This comes after detailed discussions within its technical teams and consultations with Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) across the country, the ECI said that it has committed to ensuring that each elector has a unique national EPIC number.
“The Commission has now decided to resolve this long pending issue after detailed discussions within the technical teams and concerned CEOs in the next three months by ensuring a unique national EPIC number to the existing electors having a duplicate EPIC number and for future electors as well,” the poll board said in the statement.
According to the EC, sample enquiry of over 100 electors reveals that electors with duplicate EPIC numbers are genuine electors. Since the allotment of EPIC series in the year 2,000 to the States/UTs, some EROs did not use the correct series. 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.
“As regards the issue of duplicate EPIC numbers, the Commission has already taken cognizance of the matter. Irrespective of an EPIC number, an elector who is linked to the electoral roll of a particular polling station can cast his vote at that polling station only and nowhere else,” it said. In a statement, the poll authority said India’s electoral rolls are the biggest database of electors across the globe with over 99 crore registered voters.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) flagged the issue of duplicate voter identity card numbers in different states and accused the EC of a cover-up. Reacting to this, TMC said the EC has finally “admitted and accepted” their guilt as the poll panel issued a second statement over the issue of duplication of voter ID card numbers. “The ECI has finally admitted and accepted their guilt that duplicate EPIC (Electoral Photo Identity Card) numbers have been allotted to multiple people. All of this has happened because West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee nailed the lies of the ECI and exposed this scam,” TMC Rajya Sabha MP Saket Gokhale said in a post on X shortly after the poll panel released a statement saying it will address the “decades-long” matter in the next three months.
“After being in denial, the ECI now says it will ‘fix the issue’ in just three months. 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”,” he said. Gokhale questioned how an “incorrect series” was allegedly used when ECI’s Handbook for Electoral Registration Officers has clear guidelines, and asked about the fate of the software that was supposed to catch this. He asked if the ECI said this had been happening since 2000, why nothing was done for 25 years until Banerjee pointed it out. “Why hasn’t ECI still revealed how many duplicate EPICs currently exist? This is the second eyewash in a week being passed off as a ‘clarification’ by ECI,” he said.
The EC recently held a high-level meeting to discuss concerns about duplicate of these numbers in the voter database. Following the meeting, the commission decided to launch a focused, time-bound initiative to carefully review and remove any duplicate entries and errors in the electoral rolls.
According to EC, new instructions will soon be sent to CEOs in all states and Union Territories, asking them to identify and delete duplicate records and make necessary corrections within the next two months. This move comes shortly after the TMC accused the EC of voter list manipulation and claimed that identical EPIC numbers appear across different states. The TMC has said it plans to raise the matter in Parliament next week.
