Duplicate voter IDs persist in Mahadevapura after intensive roll revision, Karnataka CEO admits

Karnataka’s Chief Electoral Officer confirmed that 803 voter IDs remain linked to just 397 individuals in Mahadevapura Assembly Constituency even after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) aimed at cleaning the rolls. The CEO’s office said the duplicates arose because several applicants filed multiple Form 6 applications through the Citizen Service Portal, and each application was processed independently, creating separate EPIC numbers for the same person. The SIR was supposed to flag repeat applications, but the independent processing let the extra IDs slip into the final list. The report also uncovered seven instances where the same EPIC number appeared in the electoral rolls of two different Assembly constituencies, amounting to 14 duplicate entries. The CEO’s office explained that approved Form 8 migration applications added voters to a new constituency, while the corresponding Form 7 requests to delete their names from the old constituency stayed pending because roll operations were frozen before final publication. Both the multiple EPIC numbers and the cross‑constituency duplicates have been sent to the relevant District Election Officers, Additional District Election Officers and Electoral Registration Officers for verification and corrective action under the law.

Context

Duplicate entries undermine the credibility of voter lists, a key component of free elections. The SIR process is meant to produce a "clean roll" by removing such errors before each election.