The Trinamool Congress on Monday reiterated its claim that the Election Commission facilitated voter fraud in West Bengal, reported The Telegraph.

At a press conference in Delhi, party MPs Derek O’Brien, Sagarika Ghose and Kirti Azad brandished lists purportedly containing the details of alleged fake voters in West Bengal possessing the same Electors Photo Identification Card, or EPIC, numbers as voters in Bharatiya Janata Party ruled states.

O’Brien gave the poll panel 24 hours to acknowledge its “EPIC scam”, warning that if it failed to do so, that more details about the alleged voter fraud would be shared with the public at 9 am on Tuesday.

EPIC, or the Electors Photo Identification Card, is issued by the Election Commission and serves as identification proof for Indian citizens over the age of 18 to cast their vote in elections. The EPIC number is the voter ID card number

The Election Commission on Sunday stated that the duplication of voter ID numbers issued in different states did not imply that fake voters had been added to electoral rolls. The allotment of the same number to more than one voter was a result of states using the same alphanumeric series, it added.

It said: “It is clarified that while EPIC numbers of some of the electors may be identical, the other details including demographic details, Assembly Constituency and polling booth are different for the electors with the same EPIC number.”

The poll body said that a voter can cast their vote only at the designated polling station in their registered constituencies, irrespective of their EPIC number.

“The allotment of identical EPIC number/series to some electors from different States/UTs was due to a decentralised and manual mechanism being followed prior to shifting of the electoral roll database of all States/UTs to the ERONET platform,” it said.

ERONET is a common web-based system used by electoral officials in all states and Union Territories to manage election processes.

“This resulted in certain State/UT CEO [chief Electrol Officer] offices using the same EPIC alphanumeric series and leaving a scope for the possibility of duplicate EPIC numbers being allotted to electors in different Assembly Constituencies in different States/UTs,” the poll panel said.

The poll panel also noted that it had decided to ensure the allotment of a unique EPIC number to registered electors to allay any apprehensions. “Any case of duplicate EPIC number will be rectified by allotting a unique EPIC number,” it added.

On Thursday, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of colluding with the Election Commission to add fake voters to electoral lists to win recent Assembly elections in Delhi and Maharashtra.

She accused the Hindutva party of hiring two agencies, Association of Billion Minds and India 360, to allegedly add residents of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana to West Bengal’s voter lists. The state will have its next Assembly election in 2026.

On Monday, O’Brien questioned the timing of the poll body’s statement, which he said came just two hours after Trinamool Congress announced its press conference. “Was someone caught red-handed?” he asked.