NEW DELHI: Election Commission, responding to concerns raised by some political parties regarding duplication in electors photo identity card (EPIC) numbers, announced on Friday that it would resolve the “decades-old issue” within the next three months.
Sharing that a recent sample inquiry of over 100 electors had revealed those with duplicate EPIC numbers to be genuine electors, EC said it has, following detailed consultations with technical teams and the concerned chief electoral officers (CEOs), set a three-month timeframe to ensure the allotment of a unique national EPIC number to the existing electors having duplicate EPIC number and to all future electors.
The three-month deadline – which will ensure that all duplicate entries are corrected before next assembly poll becomes due in Bihar – was fixed as the number of duplicate EPIC issued across the country was found to be small.
EC reiterated that “irrespective of an EPIC number, an elector linked to the electoral roll of a particular polling station can cast his vote at that polling station only .” Given that EPIC is issued to a voter solely on the basis of his inclusion in the electoral roll and any changes can be made during the annual or pre-poll roll updation, followed by a two-stage appellate process, it revealed that just 90 appeals – including 89 filed with district election officer, the first appellate authority, and one with chief electoral officer (CEO), the second and final appellate authority – were filed across the country at the last annual summary roll revision taken up between Aug 7, 2024 and Jan 10, 2025.
All the 90 appeals were filed in the sole state of Maharashtra. Though TMC has been at the forefront of flagging cases of duplicate EPIC numbers allotted to voters in West Bengal, the state did not see a single appeal being filed with the concerned DM/DEO or the state CEO.
Explaining the reason behind the duplication , EC said that since the allotment of EPIC series in the year 2000 to the states/UTs, some electoral registration officers (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,” it clarified.
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