Duplicate voter IDs, name deletions trigger row in Bengal; EC assures rectification

19-year-old Akash Saha, a resident of Kolkata’s Ultadanga area, Pradip Sarkar, 61, from Baruipur in South 24 Parganas district and Taslim Mian, 54, who lives at Gangarampur in north Bengal’s South Dinajpur district, don’t know each other but have become subjects of a raging political issue alongside a few thousand other West Bengal residents before the 2026 assembly polls in the state.

“I turned 18 in 2024 and exercised my right to franchise in the Lok Sabha election. I found two days ago that my name has been deleted from the electoral roll. My mother’s name has been deleted as well,” Saha said on Sunday at a camp local Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders held to review numerous complaints of irregularities in voters’ lists.

“There is not a single election in which I did not cast my vote in the last 40 years. When the local Champahati gram panchayat discovered in mid-February that hundreds of people from other parts of Bengal have been enlisted as voters here, I found that my name had been deleted from the electoral roll. I have lodged a complaint,” said Sarkar.

At Gangarampur, Taslim Mian, a state government employee currently posted in Malda district, faces a different problem.

“Hundreds of Gangarampur voters have found that residents of Gujarat and Haryana have been enrolled against their voter ID numbers. My number has been allotted to a person named Jignesh Makwana from Ahmedabad. How can two voters have the same number?” Mian said.

The complaints have triggered a row with the ruling TMC and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the state’s principal opposition force, accusing each other of manipulating electoral rolls in the run up to the 2026 assembly polls. BJP bagged 75 seats in the 2021 polls while TMC retained 215 in the 294-member assembly.

Also Read: Duplication of voter card numbers doesn’t imply fake voters: Election Commission

Addressing party workers in Kolkata on Thursday, chief minister and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, said, “How BJP is manipulating the voters’ list with the blessings of Election Commission is very much clear. I have long lists showing people from Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh enrolled as voters with same ID numbers allotted to local residents. These outsiders will be brought in trains during polling. This is how they (BJP) won in Maharashtra and Delhi.”

Echoing similar sentiments, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal also claimed that BJP manipulated Delhi’s electoral rolls by registering “fake” voters from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Reacting to Banerjee’s allegations on Friday, Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of the opposition in the Bengal assembly said, “She made baseless allegations. We have written to EC that there are more than 73,00,000 fake voters in Bengal. The TMC government has used its officers in the districts to enroll thousands of infiltrators from Bangladesh and Myanmar as voters.”

Election Commission of India’s (ECI) reaction

In a statement, the ECI said that they have taken cognisanse of the social media posts flagging the issue.

“The Election Commission has taken cognisance of certain social media posts and media reports flagging the issue of electors of two different states having identical EPIC numbers. In this regard, it is clarified that while EPIC numbers of some of the electors may be identical, the other details including demographic details, Assembly Constituency and polling booth are different for the electors with the same EPIC number,” the EC said in a statement.

“Irrespective of the EPIC number, any elector can cast a vote only at their designated polling station in their respective constituency in their state/UT where they are enrolled in the electoral roll and nowhere else,” the statement said.

“The allotment of identical EPIC number/series to some electors from different States/UTs was due to a decentralised and manual mechanism being followed prior to shifting of the electoral roll database of all States/UTs to the ERONET platform. This resulted in certain State/UT CEO offices using the same EPIC alphanumeric series and leaving a scope for the possibility of duplicate EPIC numbers being allotted to electors in different Assembly Constituencies in different States/UTs,” said the EC.

“However, to allay any apprehensions, the Commission has decided to ensure allotment of unique EPIC number to registered electors. Any case of duplicate EPIC number will be rectified by allotting a unique EPIC number. The ERONET 2.0 platform will be updated to aid and assist in this process,” it added.

Reacting to the poll watchdog statement, TMC called the EC’s statement a damage control exercise.

“The EC has been compelled to go into damage control mode after Mamata Banerjee exposed the massive manipulations,” TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said.

BJP district units however continued to accuse TMC of creating fake or dummy voters.

Sandip Majumdar, spokesperson of the BJP’s Nadia north organisational unit said, “TMC’s Shefali Khatun, president of the Kaliganj panchayat samiti, is enrolled as voter at both Debagram and Nakashipara. This is how TMC creates fake voters.”

Reacting to the allegation, Khatun, 35, said she will ask the authorities to rectify the mistake.

“My name was enrolled at Nakashipara after my marriage. My in-laws live there. I currently live in Debagram. I came to know of this anomaly from social media posts. I will ask the authorities to delete my name at Nakashipara,” Khatun told media persons in Nadia.

As 73 more duplicate voter ID numbers were detected in north Bengal’s Alipurduar district on Monday, Derek O’Brien, TMC leader in the Rajya Sabha said the EC should accept its error.

“The EC has admitted the error but has not accepted the error. If you do not accept the error in 24 hours, we will release another document,” O’Brien said in a video statement.

The Left also criticised the ECI.

CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya said, “The EC has given a very weak explanation. Nobody checks the background of each and every voter during the rush on polling day.”