Informist, Friday, Mar. 7, 2025

NEW DELHI – After criticism from political parties, the Election Commission of India on Friday released a statement saying that it will resolve the issue of duplicate election photo identity card numbers issued to voters within three months. After detailed discussions with the concerned chief electoral officers across the country, the poll panel said that the "long pending" issue will be resolved by ensuring a unique national election photo identity card number to the existing electors having duplicate numbers and for future electors as well.

The commission also said that irrespective of an election photo identity card 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.

"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 2000 to the States/UTs, some electoral registration officers did not use the correct series," the poll panel 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 said.

The Trinamool Congress had earlier flagged the issue of duplicate voter identity card numbers in different states and had accused the poll panel of a cover-up. On Friday, Trinamool Rajya Sabha member Saket Gokhale said the commission has finally admitted and accepted its guilt that duplicate election photo identity card numbers have been allotted to multiple people.

"After being in denial, ECI now says it will "fix the issue" in just 3 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"," Gokhale said on social media platform X.

He said if this has happened since 2000, why was nothing done for 25 years until West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee pointed it out and why hasn't the commission still revealed how many duplicate voter cards currently exist. End

Reported by Kuldeep Singh

Edited by Ashish Shirke

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