EC in a fix: 3,184 voters in Tamluk have same cards

With the state electoral roll throwing up more and more discrepancies almost everyday,the state Election Commission is passing through a difficult phase.

With the state electoral roll throwing up more and more discrepancies almost everyday,the state Election Commission is passing through a difficult phase. With the first phase of polls due in Bengal on April 30,the EC is still receiving complaints related to the electoral rolls.

The maximum complaints are related to multiple people having the same EPIC cards and the same card number. A senior EC official said thousands of such voter identity cards have been issued with the same EPIC number.

While 3,184 voters of the Tamluk constituency have same EPIC numbers,in Contai the number of voters having a similar EPIC stands at 2,695.

Similar instances were reported from the Jadavpur constituency. Chief Electoral Officer Debashis Sen said most of these defective cards belong to the WB series and not the new ones issued after the year 2000. The WB series of cards were issued when the EPIC cards were first introduced in 1993. At that time,cards were generally prepared manually and not through computer programming. As a result,chances of human error increased while transferring the EPIC numbers on the computer.

According to Sen,most of the cards are invalid,as the last three digits of the EPIC numbers have not been entered in the electoral rolls.

In many cases,we have found that the last three digits are missing. This is the reason for which more than one person is found with the same EPIC number. But our survey says that these voters with the same EPIC numbers are genuine, he added.

Sen pointed out that the WB series of EPICs consisted of 13 digits like WB/29/200/573123 but when entries were made in the computer for the electoral rolls the last three digits were not entered.

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These cards are existing for the last 15 years. But it does not mean all people having identical EPICs are false voters, said Sen.

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