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The BJP has submitted crucial data to drive home the point of voter duplication while seeking an “extensive review” of Bengal’s electoral roll with the help of technology
If someone has the name X, age Y, and address Z on their voter ID card, it should be unique to that person. (Representational image: Shutterstock)
Even before the Trinamool Congress could make a move against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre, the West Bengal BJP was one step ahead. Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar last Friday announced that they would be visiting the Election Commission of India over the issue of “bogus voters“, surprising the TMC.
By the time the Trinamool delegation went in on Tuesday to the ECI, the BJP team, including Sukanta Majumdar, Bengal co-in-charge Amit Malviya, Rajya Sabha member Samik Bhattacharya, and others, had already submitted crucial data to drive home the point of voter duplication while seeking an “extensive review” of Bengal’s electoral roll with the help of technology.
According to the Bengal BJP, there are 13,03,065 voters having the same name or bearing the same relatives’ names and the same age in their respective districts (as of March 10, 2025). For instance, if someone has the name X, age Y, and address Z on their voter ID card, it should be unique to that person. However, 13,03,065 people have copied identities and voter cards.
The Bengal BJP says the issue is more nuanced than that. The duplicate voter ID card issue is of three variations. First, the voter card itself is a duplicate and is found in other states. The number of such cards in Bengal stands at 323, said the delegation in a report to the ECI. However, the second kind of duplicate Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC), which is found in the same state but the person’s name is different, can be quantified at 857, said the report. But then came the big revelation in the third category, where the Bengal BJP claimed that the third type of EPIC IDs, which are duplicate but found in the same state and the person’s name is the same, are roughly 7,235 in total. In layman’s language, they have two voter ID cards. So, if one calculates, the duplicate saga amounts to a whopping 8,415 duplicate voter cards in the mix.
Earlier in the day, Sukanta Majumdar had a long telephone conversation with the leader of the opposition in the Bengal assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, to formulate a two-pronged strategy, say sources in the state BJP. At the heart of it was for the party to be seen as one unit, be in Bengal or New Delhi on this issue, and that there shall be no deviation.
It was decided how the BJP will counter TMC’s electoral roll complaint with “outside voter” allegations both in the EC and Parliament. While the two Bengal leaders decided to stick to statistics, it was decided to go ahead with the narrative that a “large section” of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas are given fake voter ID cards, said sources in the state BJP.
In the second part of their strategy, Suvendu and Sukanta, in their long telephone call, decided that starting Wednesday, in both houses of Parliament, BJP MPs hailing from West Bengal will raise the issue of how “Bangladeshis and Rohingyas are being infiltrated into India in a systematic way”, said a source.
“The issue of duplicate or fake voter cards in West Bengal is serious. We have asked the Election Commission to go for an extensive review for detection. There is technology available in this day and age. The ECI should avail them. Thankfully, the ECI assured us that they will do their best,” said Majumdar.
Interestingly, even as Majumdar was addressing the press outside the Election Commission, a TMC delegation was entering with complaints of its own about the voter list.
