A source in the Election Commission of India on Tuesday said that around 2.63 lakh voter cards with duplicate numbers had been discovered and rectified, a month before the deadline that the poll panel had set for itself.

In December last year, Bengal-based trade union Parijayee Shramik Aikya Mancha had drawn attention to the phenomenon of more than one voter having the same Electors’ Photo Identity Card (EPIC) number. Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee raised it in a rally in February, alleging foul play to influence the Assembly polls in the state next year.

Opposition parties highlighted the issue during the budget session of Parliament. The EC said in March that duplicate EPICs would be fixed in three months, and that even with the same EPIC number, an elector cannot vote in a booth where he or she is not enrolled.

The source in the poll panel told The Telegraph: “On an average, there are about 1,000 electors per polling station. The number of similar EPIC numbers found was minuscule, that is, averaging around one (card) 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.”

EC officials did not reveal the exact number of such cards. There are 10.5 lakh polling booths in the country.

The source added: “The genesis of the issue has been traced to 2005, when various states/ UTs were using Assembly constituency (AC)-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
ACs erroneously continued to use either the old series or the series allotted to some other constituencies.”

In March, the EC also initiated an attempt to link Aadhaar data with voter
lists ostensibly to prevent such errors.