PANAJI
In a major clean-up of the electoral rolls, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has resolved a two-decade-old issue of similar Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers being issued to genuine voters across different constituencies.
The problem dated back to 2005, when various State and Union Territory electoral offices were using different alphanumeric series for EPICs at the Assembly Constituency (AC) level. After the 2008 delimitation exercise, some constituencies continued using outdated series or mistakenly used codes belonging to other areas, leading to duplication of similar EPIC numbers.
To address this legacy issue, Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) of all 36 States and Union Territories, along with Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) from all 4,123 Assembly constituencies, examined the nationwide electoral database of over 99 crore electors. This verification covered all 10.5 lakh polling stations across India, each with an average of 1,000 voters.
The Commission found that the number of similar EPIC numbers was negligible”around one in every four polling stations. Field-level checks confirmed that such voters were genuine electors residing in different constituencies and polling stations. All affected voters have now been issued new EPIC cards with unique numbers.
The ECI clarified that the issue never allowed anyone to vote more than once, as every voter’s name is listed only in the roll of the polling station where they ordinarily reside. The similar numbers had no impact on the outcome of any election.
