The Election Commission has identified 11 of Bengal’s 294 Assembly constituencies with over 25,000 voter cards that share identical identification numbers.

These findings have re-ignited Opposition allegations of “bogus” voters in the state’s electoral roll.

The discovery of multiple voter cards with identical numbers raised concerns in the commission as it came days after the office of the state chief electoral officer released the draft voter list on November 11 with 7.4 crore voter names, where some 16 lakh names were corrected or deleted.

Sources in the commission said there were two Assembly seats — Bongaon Dakshin (North 24-Parganas), bordering Bangladesh, and Matigara-Naxalbari near Panitanki (Darjeeling) on the Nepal border — where most voter cards with identical identification numbers were traced.

They said that repeated Epic (electoral photo identity card) or multiple voter ID cards with the same number were also found in the seats of Bongaon Uttar, Madhyamgram, Rajarhat-Gopalpur, Canning Purba, Baruipur Purba and Paschim, Kurseong, Siliguri and Falakata.

“We have asked the districts' administration to physically verify all cards and remove duplicates from the electoral roll.... We are probing if it is a human error or a result of a malicious scheme to pass off foreigners as Indians,” said a commission official.

The commission has been using artificial intelligence to identify and address multiple voter cards with similar names (with slight spelling variations) categorised as demographic-similar entries, or with near-identical photos, categorised as photo-similar entries, for a clean electoral roll after corrections or deletions.

A commission official said the concern lay with voter cards with cloned identification numbers. "Identification numbers are unique and auto-generated. The chance of the same number in two or more cards is slim,” he said.

Commission officials did not rule out multiple voter cards with identical numbers in the rest of the Assembly seats. “We can only trace and eliminate them once the compilation process is complete,” said an official.

During the general election, BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari met chief electoral officer Aariz Aftab, alleging around 16 lakh fake or duplicate voters in Bengal.

The final voter list will be published on January 5, 2025.

The draft roll has 7.4 crore voters, with 6.2 lakh names added in the pre-revision phase, 4.5 lakh names removed, and corrections made to 11.2 lakh names.