The Election Commission has issued new Electors Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) to around 2.75 lakh electors across the country who were found to have the same EPIC numbers as electors in other states, EC sources said Tuesday.
The TMC had in March raised concerns over some voters in West Bengal having the same Voter ID numbers as electors in other states. On March 7, the EC had said that some states had not used the correct alphanumeric series when issuing EPICs, causing the duplication. “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 EC had said.
EC sources said the process was now complete. The EC’s database of over 99 crore electors was searched by the Chief Electoral Officers of all 36 states and UTs, which led to the duplicates being detected. When officials carried out the field verification, it was found that all the electors with duplicate IDs were genuine electors, they said. In the states where the wrong series was used, around 2.75 lakh electors with duplicate EPIC numbers were given new voter IDs with new numbers, as per a source. The electors in whose states the correct series was used continue to have the same IDs. The issue had been traced back to 2005 and had affected almost all states, it is learnt.
The EC had earlier said even if the electors had the same EPIC numbers, they could only cast their votes in the constituencies where they are enrolled.
