Will address duplicate voter ID numbers soon

The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Friday announced plans to replace all duplicate Elector Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers with unique identifiers within the next three months, but reiterated that the duplication of the numbers did not mean there were fake voters.

- Abhishek Angad

NEW DELHI:

The announcement comes amid a growing political row, most recently in Bengal where the Trinamool Congress on February 27 accused the poll body of manipulating records in a way that amounted to fraud and gave an advantage to its rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The commission said it had carried out a "sample enquiry" of over 100 electors and found that those with duplicate EPIC numbers were genuine electors. "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 body said in a statement.

People familiar with the matter said that out of more than 992 million registered voters, approximately 500,000 have been flagged for EPIC discrepancies — representing about 0.0005% of the total electorate.