Bogus papers stun EC, huge number of fictitious voters suspected in five districts
Telegraph | 15 February 2026
Around 15 to 20 per cent of enumeration forms were uploaded in five districts in Bengal with "strange documents" after the hearings of unmapped voters and those with logical discrepancies in their forms, said sources on the Election Commission.
The uploading of the false documents has made the EC suspect that a large number of voters called for hearings in Cooch Behar, Malda, Murshidabad, South 24-Parganas, and North 24-Parganas districts were non-existent.
"The EC was astonished to find that many strange documents, including newspaper cuttings, blank pages and illegible images, were even verified by the DEOs. Most importantly, 15 to 20 per cent of the documents uploaded so far are bogus," said a source.
The sources also pointed out that if proper documents were not uploaded in place of the invalid testimonials by February 21, all the names would be deleted from the electoral rolls. They added that the EC top brass had pulled up the five district magistrates, who function as DEOs, and asked them to take such cases off the system by Monday.
The rebuke came during the top EC officials' video conference with DEOs in Bengal on Friday.
"The top brass of the poll panel raised questions whether voters against whose names such documents were uploaded existed at all," said a source.
An official explained why the EC's top brass felt that many of the voters against whom such documents were uploaded were non-existent.
"If a voter has none of the specified documents, he or she would have submitted documents like Aadhaar, PAN card or voter card as many other voters did. It is hard to believe that voters would submit blank pages or newspaper cuttings," said the official.
He also said it was unlikely that the EROs and AEROs uploaded those documents and the DEOs verified the same without any intention.
"Handful of such documents could be uploaded because of mistakes, but it can't be accepted that 15 to 20 per cent of the documents uploaded so far were bogus and verified," the official added.
The issue became a talking point in the administrative as well as political circles, as the figure of such voters could be huge.
"About 60 lakh voters in these five districts were served hearing notices. Till now, documents of about 70 per cent of such voters have been uploaded. If the trend continues this way, more than 12 lakh voters' names could be deleted from the list," said a source.
Another official said that there was every reason to believe the presence of fictitious names on the voter list, as the poll panel had earlier detected a few hundred fictitious names on the electoral rolls of three Assembly segments — Baruipur Purba, Moyna, Rajarhat-Gopalpur.
"The way the EROs and AEROs of these segments allowed fictitious voters' names to enter into the rolls, it is hard to believe that so many bogus documents were approved without the knowledge of the DEOs, EROs and AEROs," said the official.
Apart from the five districts, sources said, similar documents were found uploaded and verified in other districts as well, like East Burdwan and West Burdwan.
"The number of such documents in other districts is not that high compared to these five districts, but the number is not negligible either," said a source.
The IT team of Nirvachan Sadan will start scanning the documents after February 16 to check if such documents still exist in the system.
"If such documents are found to exist after Monday, the DMs, EROs and the AEROs concerned will face stringent action as the poll panel is considering the act to be an offence that would hurt the effort to prepare error-free electoral rolls," said a bureaucrat.