ECI fixes 20-year-old voter ID glitch, reissues cards to genuine electors

The Election Commission of India has resolved a 20-year-old issue of similar EPIC numbers caused by legacy errors. All affected genuine voters have been reissued unique ID cards, ensuring accuracy without affecting past elections. 

In its effort to sanitize and update the electoral rolls, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has resolved a nearly two-decade-old issue involving similar EPIC (Electors Photo Identity Card) numbers. These numbers had been erroneously issued to genuine voters due to the use of similar alphanumeric series by different Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) since 2005.

According to ECI sources, to address this long-standing issue, Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) of all 36 States and Union Territories, along with EROs from all 4,123 Assembly constituencies, thoroughly examined the electoral database—covering over 99 crore electors across 10.5 lakh polling stations. On average, each polling station has about 1,000 electors.

The number of similar EPIC numbers discovered was extremely small—on average, only one such case in every four polling stations. Field-level verification confirmed that all individuals with similar EPIC numbers were genuine voters registered in different polling stations and constituencies. All affected electors have now been issued new EPIC cards with unique numbers.

The issue originated in 2005, when States and UTs were independently assigning different alphanumeric series to constituencies. The delimitation of constituencies in 2008 required a change in these series, but some constituencies either continued using the old series or inadvertently used series from other areas due to typographical errors.

Importantly, every voter’s name is listed only in the electoral roll of the polling station where they reside. Possessing an EPIC number similar to someone else's never enabled a person to vote at a different polling station. Hence, the issue of similar EPIC numbers did not impact the outcome of any election.