The Election Commission has resolved a decades-old issue of duplicate voter ID numbers, issuing fresh EPICs and ensuring unique identifiers for all electors to strengthen electoral transparency.
In a major move to bolster the integrity and transparency of India’s electoral process, the Election Commission (EC) has resolved the decades-old issue of duplicate voter identity card numbers, top sources in the poll panel confirmed on Tuesday.
The development comes amid allegations by opposition parties, including the Trinamool Congress (TMC), which accused the EC of a “cover-up” after raising concerns about identical Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers being assigned to different voters across states.
According to EC sources, such cases were “minuscule,” averaging around one instance per four polling stations across the country. During extensive field-level verification, it was found that electors with similar EPIC numbers were genuine voters registered in different assembly constituencies and different polling stations.
“All electors found to have identical voter card numbers have now been issued fresh EPICs with new, unique numbers,” a senior EC official said.
The issue dates back to the early days of digitisation in the 1990s and early 2000s when EPICs were introduced. Due to manual data entry and limited technology, overlapping or identical numbers were sometimes generated, especially in densely populated areas and among migrant populations. Though these did not result in double voting—since electors can vote only at their registered polling station—the duplications raised concerns about data accuracy and electoral credibility.
In March, following rising political pressure, the EC had pledged to resolve the issue within three months. To that end, the Commission undertook a comprehensive audit of India’s vast electoral database, covering over 99 crore electors. Chief Electoral Officers of all 36 states and Union territories, along with Electoral Registration Officers from 4,123 assembly constituencies and 10.5 lakh polling stations, participated in the verification drive.
The EC reiterated that the anomaly was not widespread enough to affect election outcomes but acknowledged the need to eliminate all inconsistencies to uphold public trust. The Commission has now implemented a system to ensure each elector is issued a unique national EPIC number, a protocol that will apply to all future voters as well.
