EC lens on duplicate voters, BLOs may come knocking again to click photos
Times of India | 18 November 2025
Kolkata: Whether one has provided their photographs or not, the BLOs can come knocking at home again, this time to take your photographs on mobile camera. These photographs will be scanned by the EC, which will use AI-based software to identify duplicate voters in the ongoing SIR exercise in the state, Manoj Agarwal, chief electoral officer, West Bengal, said on Monday.
"The identification and deletion of duplicate, dead, and shifted voters will start once all enumeration forms are digitised, and after that, the draft electoral list will be published on Dec 9," he stated.
"The
has two software tools — demographically similar elector (DSE) and photo similar elector (PSE) — to identify duplicate electors' names in central database of electors. The DSE identifies the duplicate elector by the elector's name, father/guardian's name, and address.
The PSE helps in detecting any photo similar to elector's. The ECI will run these two software tools once the SIR data of all electors in Bengal is uploaded on its system for the deduplication exercise," a senior official said.
"The BLOs have been instructed to visit every applicant's house who has filled the forms offline or online and take their pictures. Those pictures will be digitised for identification and deletion of duplicate, dead, and shifted voters by AI-based software," Agarwal stated, adding that upon detection of duplicate, dead, and shifted voters, the signed person in the enumeration form and the concerned BLO would be held responsible and face punitive action.
Asked whether the BLOs would visit the applicants who have pasted their pictures on the enumeration forms, he replied, "The BLOs are supposed to visit the house of every applicant. Pictures that can't be scanned will be clicked again by the BLOs on their mobile phone and uploaded."
The ECI will use tools to identify duplicate electors' names in its central database and upon detecting any elector's name in any other assembly constituency/parliamentary constituency in the country, it will be treated as a punishable offence under Section 31 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, the officials added.
The ECI has given the BLO app to all 80,681 BLOs engaged in the SIR exercise in Bengal. The app comes with a pre-installed tool, which helps the BLOs to search any duplicate elector's name in the same part number of an assembly constituency.
"It is not possible to detect any elector's name registered in any other assembly constituency in the country. So, the deduplication exercise will be started after uploading all electoral data on database.
The commission doesn't need Aadhaar data from UIDAI to detect the duplicate electors on the country's electoral roll," another official said, adding that for every new elector's application, the ECI uses DSE and PSE tools to identify whether the same applicant is already registered as a voter anywhere in India.
The EC has already decided to match Aadhaar data with data collected through enumeration forms to weed out deceased electors from list. UIDAI has already informed CEO, West Bengal, that they have records of 32-34 lakh dead Bengal residents since 2022, who had Aadhaar.