How Duplicate Voter Entries Are Determined? Supreme Court Asks Election Commission Of India

The bench comprising CJI DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala, and Justice Manoj Misra was hearing the petition filed by Samvidhan Bachao Trust, an NGO, raising the issue of duplicate voter entries.

Senior Advocate Meenakshi Arora appearing for the petitioners highlighted that “ My main case is, when the Chief Electoral Officer issues notices to all his district collector officers to carry out the process, he mentions the deletions of the names of the dead and those who have shifted, but he does not mention about the duplication at all. And when the return comes back, there is no mention of the duplication at all.” She added that the ECI has not addressed this issue in their counter-affidavit.

On enquiry by the CJI, Sharma informed the bench that the final electoral rolls will be published by February 8, 2024. The CJI asked Mr Sharma to give a break on the number of persons who have been finally identified as dead and shifted residence and deleted from duplication thereafter.

Arora explained to the court about the process of de-duplication, wherein through computerization duplicate entries are caught which have been entered into the electoral roll. Stressing that the process is time efficient, she added “ There have been cases where just before the election process also, the Courts have directed them to carry out the de-duplication also. Our grievance is that you may have excellent instructions in place, but those instructions have to be implemented on the ground.”

Referring to the State of Uttar Pradesh, Arora underlined that while the chief electoral officer instructs the district officers to carry out verification of the dead or shifted, there was no column for “multiple entries” / “duplicate entries”. This indicates that data with regard to duplication has not been adequately covered. The duplicate entries can be misused as it is the same people twice and twice the votes could be cast.

Taking note of the same the Bench directed the ECI to file its response with regards to the issue of non-mentioning of duplication in the data collection by the district officers and the presence of voter names who are dead, shifted or have practically similar entries is more than the actual number of persons

Case Title: Samvidhan Bachao Trust v Election Commission of India W.P.(C) No. 1228/2023 PIL-W