Tarun Karthick
Sri Vijaya Puram, 13 May 2025
In a significant step towards ensuring the accuracy and integrity of India’s electoral rolls, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has successfully resolved a nearly 20-year-old legacy issue involving the issuance of similar Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers to genuine voters.
The issue, which dates back to 2005, arose due to the decentralised and inconsistent use of alphanumeric series by different Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) across States and Union Territories. In some cases, similar EPIC numbers were inadvertently issued to electors in different Assembly constituencies, primarily due to overlapping or erroneously reused series.
To address this, the ECI launched an extensive sanitization drive involving the Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) of all 36 States and UTs and the EROs of all 4,123 Assembly constituencies. The electoral database—comprising over 99 crore registered voters and covering 10.5 lakh polling stations—was scrutinised. On average, each polling station houses around 1,000 electors.
The Commission found that instances of similar EPIC numbers were extremely rare, with an average of just one case in every four polling stations. Field-level verification confirmed that the affected individuals were bona fide voters residing in different polling areas. All such electors have since been issued fresh EPICs with unique numbers to eliminate any future discrepancies.
The problem’s roots were traced to the pre-delimitation period of 2005–2008, when changes in Assembly constituency boundaries and errors in transitioning to new EPIC series led to occasional duplication or typographical mistakes in number assignment.
Importantly, the ECI clarified that the presence of similar EPIC numbers did not compromise electoral integrity. Since a voter can only cast their vote at the polling station where they are registered as an ordinary resident, duplication of EPIC numbers had no bearing on election outcomes.
The resolution of this legacy issue marks another milestone in the ECI’s ongoing efforts to maintain a clean and reliable electoral roll for the world’s largest democracy. (Story Based on PR)