Growing Voters List Anomalies Spark Calls for ECI Accountability

Voters List Anomalies Surge Amid Election Fraud Claims in India

Allegations of irregularities in voters list related to Maharashtra’s electoral rolls have resurfaced after a fresh probe conducted by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) reconfirmed that the same voter’s name appears multiple times in official records. Venkatesh Nayak, Director of CHRI, cross-verified a claim about duplicate entries in the Nalasopara Vidhan Sabha constituency, which falls under the Palghar Lok Sabha seat. According to his findings, the name of one woman, Sushama Gupta, appears six times in the rolls of Nilemore and Tulinj localities, each with a different and supposedly unique EPIC (Electronic Photo Identity Card) number.

The investigation conducted on August 12, 2025, between 5:00 and 6:30 pm, used two methods: checking the EPIC numbers mentioned in the claim against the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) online voter database, and downloading the complete Nilemore voter list from the ECI portal. The downloaded list, last updated on October 29, 2024—just weeks before the Maharashtra Assembly elections—confirmed the duplication. Out of six entries, five remained “live”, raising serious questions about the reliability of the rolls and the oversight of election officials.

Six EPIC Numbers, One Voter: A Red Flag

“The voter roll that I have looked at is in relation to two specific polling stations and the cross verifications I have done is primarily desk-based,” Nayak explained. “Three days ago on social media, a certain page from that voter list was circulated with photographs of the voters. The post said that one lady, who is a registered voter in the constituency of Nalasopara and who votes through that polling station, had her name mentioned about six times on the voter list.”

He added, “Now, photographic electoral rolls are not publicly available — only the election bureaucracy and polling agents can access them. The Election Commission of India (ECI) publishes rolls without photographs on its website. So, I decided to download the voter roll from the ECI database, after identifying which polling station it belonged to. We searched for this woman’s name. What we found confirmed the claim: her details appeared six times, each with a different EPIC number. Since EPIC numbers are supposed to be unique, this is a serious irregularity.”

An EPIC number — the Electors Photo Identity Card number — is the unique identifier assigned to every voter in India’s electoral database. By design, no two voters can share the same number, and no individual can possess more than one. The discovery that a single person has been assigned six different EPIC numbers is therefore not a clerical slip, but a serious discrepancy that undermines the credibility of the rolls. It creates the possibility of duplicate voting, erodes public trust in the system, and signals a glaring failure in the Election Commission’s responsibility to maintain free and fair elections. 

“Out of the six entries, only one was marked as ‘deleted.’ The other five were live entries across two pages of the list — four on page 26 and one on page 42,” Nayak said. “This roll was dated 29th October 2024, just a month before the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha elections. So the discrepancy continued to persist even then. This is a grave concern. To be clear, we cannot claim that the individual actually voted multiple times — but the fact that her name was live in five places on the same list is highly problematic.”

Explaining the motivation behind his inquiry, Nayak added, “The reason we conducted this cross-verification was that, when similar stories appeared earlier, opposition parties cited photographic rolls as evidence. The Election Commission dismissed those claims, saying the documents being circulated were not generated by them. So, we decided to test this using the ECI’s own publicly available database. And as you can see, the duplication is very real.”

When Public Data Disappears, Trust in Elections Suffers

India today has nearly one billion registered voters — about 970 million during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Cross-verifying every entry across all rolls would require an army of researchers, which is far beyond the financial and human capacity of civil society groups. However, Nayak pointed out that when individuals and organisations do undertake such checks and bring discrepancies to light, it becomes the duty of the ECI to respond, act, and provide a transparent explanation.

The issue has also taken a political turn. After Congress leader Rahul Gandhi raised questions in a recent press conference about voter roll irregularities, concerns about transparency have only deepened. Citizens and watchdogs alike are asking: how is it that critical data, which should be publicly available for scrutiny, can suddenly go missing from official portals?

“When I tried to verify similar claims made by opposition leader Rahul Gandhi during a press conference — relating to a constituency in my home district of Bangalore Urban — I could not access the relevant Karnataka rolls,” Nayak said. “We tried multiple constituencies, but the voter rolls were not available for download. They simply do not download from the CEO’s website. We tried, on a sample basis, for various constituencies and polling stations. Each time, after successfully entering the polling station name, the captcha code, and everything else, the message that appears is ‘Download success.’ But when you check on your computer, in every folder, the document is not downloaded anywhere at all.”

He continued, “So, I was not able to verify, even for my own parental home district, whether those claims made about Mahadevapura were accurate. There was one polling station in the village of Bhoganahalli that I particularly wanted to check, because similar cases of multiple entries were reported there. But in the absence of access to the Election Commission’s database, I could not do it. I not only tried through the CEO’s website; I also tried through the Election Commission’s own Voter Services portal. But those electoral rolls simply would not download. We tried on three different occasions over the last three days. Each time, the PDFs could not be downloaded. I don’t know if that has changed today — I haven’t checked today — but as of yesterday, it was not working.”

Accidental Errors or Clear-Cut Negligence?

In a striking incident of a possible clerical error, Minta Devi, a 35-year-old homemaker from Arjanipur village in Siwan district, Bihar, was mistakenly listed as 124 years old in the draft voter rolls due to her birth year being entered as 1900 instead of 1990. Her case became a flashpoint: opposition MPs donned T-shirts reading “124 Not Out” during protests against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Parliament, but Devi later refuted their use of her image and age, clarifying that the error was unintentional and not her doing. The District Election Officer confirmed the mistake as a typo and said that Ms. Devi had already applied for correction under Form-8 during the SIR process. 

“Minta Devi’s case may be probably a clerical error: instead of typing 1990, someone entered 1900. But other cases — like Mahadevapura’s Bhoganahalli or the Nalasopara example we discussed — cannot be dismissed as clerical mistakes. They are clear cases of negligence, or even dereliction of duty,” Nayak said. 

“In our case study, we found that this voter’s name was listed five times on the same page, and once on another page. Now, when election officials sign off on a draft electoral roll after the summary revision and certify it as final, are they not even looking at the pages? They have access to the photographs, which we do not, because we are neither polling agents nor election officials. The Electoral Registration Officer (ERO), the Booth Level Officer, the District Election Officer — all of them are responsible for ensuring accuracy after every revision. They should have caught this duplication. Why didn’t they?”

He adds: “In fact, this appears to be the first such case where the Election Commission itself has acknowledged the issue. The Chief Electoral Officer of Maharashtra has called for a report on this specific discrepancy in the Nalasopara roll — from Nilemore village. They have instructed that all duplicate entries should be deleted, leaving only the genuine one. That acknowledgment itself shows it was negligence. And not just by one officer — but across the chain: from the Booth Level Officer to the ERO to the District Election Officer.”

Under Section 32 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, any electoral officer—including EROs, Assistant EROs, or any person entrusted with duties related to the preparation, revision, correction, inclusion, or exclusion of entries in electoral rolls—can face serious legal consequences for dereliction of duty. The law mandates a punishment including imprisonment or fine. 

However, no court can act upon such breaches unless the Election Commission of India or the respective Chief Electoral Officer files a complaint. This provision highlights that while accountability is legally required, its enforcement depends entirely on the willingness of the ECI or CEOs to activate that system.

In principle, the ECI can take action against officials who fail in their duties—but when it does not, that silence signals a lack of accountability. It cannot be enough to pass off such errors as bureaucratic mishaps. When discrepancies are publicly raised—by civil society, journalists, or political leaders—it becomes incumbent upon the ECI to probe these matters and, if warranted, pursue disciplinary or legal consequences.

Yet in practice, the ECI often appears defensive, withholding access to critical datasets and resisting transparency. When both public access and internal scrutiny are constrained, the credibility of the system itself is eroded. If neither the ECI nor the broader citizenry has the necessary means to audit or demand clarity, the very foundation of trust in electoral systems is at risk. And ultimately, this raises a troubling question: where does this leave the election process in the world’s largest democracy?

(With special inputs from Devansh Das)