To sanitize and update electoral rolls, the Election Commission of India has resolved a nearly 20-year-old legacy issue of similar Electors Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) numbers erroneously issued to genuine electors due to similar series used by different EROs in such cases since 2005, sources said.

According to the sources, to resolve this long-pending issue, the entire electoral database of over 99-crore electors was searched by CEOs of all the 36 states/Union Territories and the EROs of all the 4123 Assembly constituencies across the country in all the 10.50 lakh polling stations.

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On an average, there are about 1,000 electors per polling station, and the number of similar EPIC numbers found were miniscule, that is, averaging to around 1(one) in 4 (four) polling stations.

The sources further said that during the field level verification, it was found that holders of such similar EPIC numbers were genuine electors in different assembly constituencies and polling stations.

Accordingly, all such electors have since been issued new EPIC cards with new numbers.

The origin of the issue has been traced from the year 2005, when various states and union territories were using assembly constituency-wise different alphanumeric series in a decentralised manner.

The sources said that these series had to be changed again in 2008, after delimitation of the constituencies.

However, during this period, some ACs erroneously continued to use either the old series or because of typographic errors they used the series allotted to some other constituencies.

Every voter’s name is in the electoral roll of the Polling station where she or he is an ordinary resident.

Having had an EPIC of similar number never enabled any such person to vote at any other polling station, and the issue of having similar EPIC could not have impacted the results of any elections, sources added.