Karnataka’s Chief Electoral Officer acknowledged on Saturday that multiple voter ID numbers were generated for the same person during the state’s Special Intensive Revision, days after the state’s final electoral rolls cut the voter count by nearly a crore names. At least 803 voter IDs were linked to 397 people in Bengaluru’s Mahadevapura Assembly constituency alone, according to Scroll.in, citing The Hindu.
What the election office admitted
Karnataka’s Chief Electoral Officer said multiple Elector Photo Identity Card numbers were issued to the same person because of “procedural circumstances during data processing.” The office attributed the problem to two separate mechanisms in how applications were processed during the revision.
Some voters submitted more than one Form 6 inclusion application through the Citizen Service Portal, and each one was processed separately, generating a fresh ID every time. Separately, some voters who had moved and had their Form 8 migration applications approved into a new constituency kept their old ID active too, because the Form 7 application to delete them from their previous constituency was still pending when the rolls were frozen ahead of final publication.
Scroll.in’s report also described cases where the same ID number appeared in the final rolls of two different Assembly constituencies at once, a separate category of error from the Mahadevapura duplicates. The CEO’s office did not say how many such cross-constituency cases exist statewide.
The cases have been referred to district election officers, additional district election officers and electoral registration officers for verification and correction, the CEO’s office said, adding that the Election Commission remains committed to the accuracy, transparency and integrity of the electoral rolls.
No opposition party had publicly responded to Saturday’s admission at the time of publication, and the CEO’s office did not say whether the verification process would change the final roll numbers already published on October 27.
How large the rolls revision was
Karnataka’s final electoral roll, published on October 27, removed more than 99.3 lakh names statewide. The total electorate fell from 5.5 crore to 4.5 crore, a decline of roughly 17.9 percent, Scroll.in reported.
Karnataka was also the state with the highest count of foreign citizens identified on voter rolls during the broader SIR exercise nationally, at 716 cases, a figure Praman reported on October 30 based on Hindustan Times’ reporting across six states.
Karnataka is not the only state where SIR-linked roll complaints have reached election officials this cycle. In Uttar Pradesh’s Pilibhit Sadar constituency, Congress alleged roughly 16,000 name irregularities, prompting the state Election Commission to remove officials and order a recheck of the voter list, Praman reported in late October. The complaints differ in detail, but both point to the same underlying strain on the SIR process: large-scale data verification carried out on a tight timeline, across crore-sized voter rolls.
Why Mahadevapura specifically
Mahadevapura has been at the centre of voter-roll disputes in Karnataka since 2025, when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged roughly 11,965 duplicate entries and other irregularities in the constituency’s electoral rolls, according to The News Minute. At the time, the Karnataka CEO’s office asked Gandhi to submit the specific names involved along with a signed declaration for each, warning that false declarations are punishable by law.
Saturday’s admission of duplicate IDs in the same constituency, this time tied specifically to the ongoing SIR process rather than Gandhi’s 2025 allegations, adds an official acknowledgement to a dispute that had previously rested on opposition claims and the Election Commission’s rebuttals. The two episodes involve overlapping geography but separate processes, and the CEO’s office has not said whether the SIR-era duplicates confirm or relate to the entries Gandhi flagged in 2025.
The admission follows weeks of national attention on SIR-related voter deletions and roll errors. The Supreme Court has separately pressed the Election Commission on deletion procedures in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, and opposition parties held a rally at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan in early November demanding the removal of the Chief Election Commissioner over SIR disputes, Praman reported on November 2.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Special Intensive Revision?
It is a nationwide exercise by the Election Commission of India to re-verify and update voter rolls, which has run in phases across multiple states through 2026.
How many people were affected by the duplicate IDs in Karnataka?
The Hindu’s reporting, cited by Scroll.in, found at least 803 voter IDs linked to 397 people in the Mahadevapura constituency alone. The CEO’s office has not given a statewide total for duplicate IDs.
Will the duplicate entries be corrected?
The CEO’s office said the cases were referred to district and constituency-level election officials for verification and remedial action, without giving a timeline.
What to watch next
Whether the district-level verification produces a statewide correction count, and whether opposition parties respond to an official admission in a constituency they have disputed since 2025, are the two threads likely to develop from here.
Leave a Reply