Lucknow, Oct 18
The Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer's (CEO) office has rejected claims circulating on social media that a voter received four voter ID cards after submitting only two Form 6 applications, clarifying that the individual had actually submitted four applications and consequently received four Elector Photo Identity Cards (EPICs).
The CEO's office said that the generation of duplicate EPICs following repeated applications by the same individual was a long-standing issue. It added that the Election Commission periodically carries out deduplication.
The clarification came after a social media user alleged that one person had submitted Form 6 twice but received four voter ID cards, questioning the process and suggesting that multiple cards were being issued for a single voter.
"One person applied twice. The EC gave them four voter IDs. Buy one get one free! There are several such cases," the user claimed in the social media post.
Responding to the allegation, the Uttar Pradesh CEO's office took to X and disputed the user's version of events, stating, "Mr Fact-checker please fact-check your own facts. There is no such scheme as 'Buy one Get one free' scheme by Election Commission. As per your post, the voter had submitted only two applications, and he got 4 EPIC cards. This statement is false. The voter had submitted 4 applications."
Challenging the social media user to substantiate the allegation, the office said that the reference numbers of the applications could be shared to establish the actual number of forms submitted by the voter.
"If you want to dispute our facts, then you post the reference numbers of two applications that you claim he had submitted and we will post the reference number of the remaining two," the CEO's office said.
The office also acknowledged that the generation of multiple EPICs when an individual submits several applications has been a persistent problem, while adding that steps are being taken to address the issue through periodic deduplication.
"The problem of generation of multiple EPICs on submission of multiple forms of an individual is a long-standing one. We do deduplication through ECINET periodically. We are on the path to achieving the objective of catching multiple forms submitted by an individual at the submission stage only. We will achieve our objective very soon," it added.
The CEO's office further cautioned against spreading what it described as "patently false" information about the Election Commission, saying that such claims could "create disaffection" among the citizens in a constitutional body.
"You are advised to rectify your mistake by amending or deleting your post after completing your own due diligence now that you have been informed by us about your wrong information," the CEO's office added.
The clarification comes amid continuing scrutiny of the Special Intensive Review (SIR) procedure and the systems used to issue voter identity cards.
