Overview

• The Election Commission of India has resolved a two-decade-old issue of duplicate Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers, which arose due to legacy errors in constituency-level coding systems from 2005 and 2008.
• A nationwide database search of over 99 crore electors across 36 States/UTs and 10.5 lakh polling stations identified approximately 2.63 lakh duplicate EPICs, averaging one case in every four polling stations.
• Field verification confirmed that holders of duplicate EPICs were genuine voters in different constituencies and that the duplication did not allow multiple votes or impact election results.
• New and unique EPICs have been issued to all affected voters, ensuring that each elector now has a distinct voter ID number for enhanced electoral roll integrity.
• Despite the technical resolution, political skepticism remains, with opposition parties like the Trinamool Congress alleging manipulation and rejecting the Election Commission's clarifications as insufficient.