3 days after TMC’s voter-list fraud charge, EC gives an EPIC reply
Times of India | 3 March 2025
Kolkata: Election Commission of India (EC) on Sunday conceded that two voters from two different states or UTs may have been issued the same number on their electoral photo identify card (EPIC), but denied that that implied duplicate or fake voters, a charge levelled by Trinamool chief and Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, and later echoed by other party functionaries, on Feb 27.
The poll body's logic — issued through a press note by EC director Anuj Chandak — was simple: even though the numbers might be same, other data, including demographic details, assembly constituency and polling booth, would be different. This, the note claimed, made it impossible for any voter to cast his/her vote from any place other than the poll station in his/her respective constituency. However, in order to quell apprehensions, "any case of duplicate EPIC number will be rectified by allotting a unique EPIC number", the note added.
Trinamool took EC's clarification as evidence of a vindication of Banerjee's stance. "The EC note validates what CM Banerjee said," spokesperson Kunal Ghosh posted on X.
Banerjee had, on Feb 27, flagged the issue of EPIC card numbers of multiple Bengal voters matching with people settled in Haryana, Gujarat and Rajasthan. The allegation was that this anomaly was made possible because of online voter enrolment. Banerjee had even named two political advocacy groups for this "voter manipulation", saying this was done to replace genuine Bengal voters with fake ones.
EC director Anuj Chandak's note, however, said: "Any elector can cast a vote only at the designated polling station in their respective constituency in their state/UT where they are enrolled in the electoral rolls and nowhere else." The statement also explained why the issue had cropped up. "The allotment of identical EPIC number/series to some electors from different states/UTs was due to a decentralised and manual mechanism being followed prior to shifting of the electoral roll database... to the ERONET platform. This resulted in certain state/UT chief electoral officer's offices using the same EPIC alphanumeric series," the note read.
Saying EC had decided to ensure allotment of unique EPIC numbers to registered electors, Chandak's note said that the ERONET 2.0 platform would be updated "to aid and assist in this process."
Trinamool took EC's clarification as a vindication of Banerjee's — and the party's —stance on the matter. "The EC note validates what CM Banerjee said — that EPIC numbers of people in Bengal and linked with people outside the state. The EC has promised action. But our party workers will continue their door-to-door scrutiny of the voter list. Bengal is not Maharashtra or Delhi, here we will not allow any such thing", Trinamool spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said on X.