Duplicate voter card number resolved, miniscule cases with similar EPIC numbers: Election Commission

New Delhi: Tracing the "genesis" of multiple electoral identity cards having identical numbers to 2005, the Election Commission (EC) has said that it has resolved the "20-year-old legacy issue" by providing such voters with new Electoral Photo Identity Cards (EPICs).

EC officials said the number of similar EPIC numbers found were "miniscule", averaging to around one in four polling stations. There are around 10.50 lakh polling stations.

Every voter’s name is in the electoral roll of the polling station where he or she is an ordinary resident and having had an EPIC of similar number never enabled any such person to vote at any other polling station, they said adding, thus, the issue of a similar EPIC "could not have impacted the results of any elections".

The EC had initiated a scrutiny of EPIC cards in March after Opposition parties, including Congress and Trinamool Congress, alleged manipulation of voters' lists. The poll body had then said it would address the "decades-long" matter in the next three months.

The electoral cards with identical numbers were “erroneously issued to genuine electors” because similar series were used by different Electoral Registration Officers in such cases since 2005, the officials said.

"To resolve this long pending problem, the entire electoral database of over 99-crore electors was searched by CEOs of all the 36 States/UTs and EROs of all the 4123 Assembly constituencies across India in all the 10.50 lakh polling stations," they said.

"On an average there are about 1000 electors per polling station. The number of similar EPIC numbers found were miniscule, i.e. averaging to around one in four polling stations. During the field level verification, it was found that holders of such similar EPIC numbers were genuine electors in different assembly constituencies and different polling stations. All such electors have since been issued new EPIC cards with new numbers," the said.

Officials said the genesis of the issue has been traced from 2005, when various states and union territories were using Assembly constituency-wise different alphanumeric series in a decentralised manner.

"These series had to be changed again in 2008, after delimitation of the constituencies. During this period, some assembly constituencies erroneously continued to use either the old series or because of typographic errors they used the series allotted to some other constituencies," they added