The country’s election commission is facing a serious challenge regarding fake voters on the electoral roll. Concerns arose over the true identities of voters due to multiple names linked to the same voter ID number. Opposition parties, including Congress and Trinamool Congress, accused the ruling party of coming to power through the influence of these fake voters.
They also raised questions about the impartiality of the election commission in this context. In response to the opposition’s allegations, the election commission has taken the matter seriously. It has announced that it will resolve this long-standing issue within the next three months.
Recently, the Election Commission’s acknowledgment that multiple voters can share the same voter ID number has heated up the political landscape in the country. The Congress and Trinamool Congress have raised allegations that the same voter ID is being used by multiple voters in the same state. The opposition has also accused that the voter list in West Bengal includes voters illegally from neighboring states, similar to claims made in Maharashtra and Delhi.
The opposition had put the Election Commission in the dock regarding this matter. According to the Election Commission’s Manual on Electoral Rolls, 2023, all election-related photo identification cards should have a unique number. However, the Commission itself clarified that this was not the case in reality. Nevertheless, the Election Commission announced that a decision has now been made to resolve this long-standing issue. Accordingly, from now on, voters who have duplicate EPIC numbers will be assigned a unique voter number. The Election Commission also announced that such unique numbers will be provided for future voters.
However, the Election Commission has clarified that even if the voter identification numbers are the same in different states, they are considered separate voters. Their names and numbers are included in the voter list of specific constituencies. Therefore, even if the numbers are identical, they cannot vote in each other’s locations. The same voter identification number has been created due to manual inclusion of names. Having the same voter ID number does not imply that there are duplicate or physical voters in the country.
Following this announcement, the opposition has become more aggressive, claiming this is a moral victory for them, particularly for parties like TMC and Congress. The opposition alleges that the Election Commission illegally inflated the number of voters in Maharashtra and Delhi, and this has now been revealed. Notably, in Maharashtra, there was an increase of 4,902,905 voters between the Lok Sabha elections and the Assembly elections, which took place five months apart.
The opposition repeatedly claimed that the increase was abnormal. However, the election commission was unable to provide any acceptable reasons for this voter increase. Delhi itself raised allegations of discrepancies. As a result, even though the country’s election commission announced a single number for voter ID cards with photos, it has not been able to clear itself of the accusations.
