New Delhi: The Indian Election Commission said on Tuesday that the duplicate EPIC card problem has been resolved as those duplicate card numbers have been issued new numbers and voter cards. Officials said similar epics were found to be small, with an average of about a quarter of the country’s wide network of 1.05 million polling stations.
The move comes after the March deadline for Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar received complaints from the political party, mainly Trinamul Congress, to resolve the issue and accused epic numbers and voter card duplication. The issues that TMC has said can lead to false votes. However, ECI said it was a legacy issue.
“In an effort to disinfect the election volumes and keep it up to date, ECI solved the legacy issues of nearly 20 years old, with similar epic numbers coming up that were wrongly sent to real voters because different Eros have used similar series since 2005,” said the source at ECI.
They added that to address this long-standing pending issue, the entire database of the Chief Election Officer (EROS) of all 36 states/union territories and Election Registration Officer (ERO) was searched in all 43 states/union territories and Election Registration Officer (ERO) of all 4,123 parliaments in India. On average, there are about 1,000 voters per polling station.
Officials said there were few similar epics found, with an average of one-quarter of the polling stations. “During the on-site verification period, the holders of this similar epic number were found to be real voters in different parliamentary constituencies and different polling stations. Since then, all of these electors have been issued new EPIC cards and have new numbers,” the officials said.
