The curious case of multiple entries of a female voter of Maharashtra: What ECI's online voter records reveal

By Venkatesh Nayak*
Cyberspace is agog with data, names and documents which question the reliability of the electoral rolls prepared by the electoral bureaucracy in Maharashtra prior to the General Elections conducted in 2024. One such example of deep dive probing has brought to the surface, the name of one female voter in the 132-Nalasopara (Gen) Vidhan Sabha Constituency in Maharashtra. Nalasopara is part of the Palghar (ST) Lok Sabha constituency. This media report claims that this individual's name figures multiple times in the voter list of the same constituency.
This analysis contains details of a cross verification exercise we undertook between 5:00-6:30pm on 12th August, 2025 using the publicly accessible voter list database and the Search in Electoral Roll facility created by the Election Commission of India (ECI).
How did we go about probing?
The aforementioned media report states that the name of one individual Ms. Sushma Gupta figures five times on the electoral rolls of Nilemore locality and once again in the voter list of Tulinj locality of the same Vidhan Sabha constituency. So we decided to cross check this claim on two fronts:
1) Using the image of the voter list displayed in the media story, we keyed in the EPIC numbers mentioned against Ms. Sushma Gupta to see if the ECI's Voter List Portal throws up any data; and
2) We downloaded the entire voter list of the Nilemore locality from the same portal to check whether the claim about multiple mentions is true. This voter list downloaded from the ECI's Portal states that it was last updated on 29/10/2024. Perhaps this list was prepared after the summary revision of the electoral rolls ahead of the Vidhan Sabha elections in Maharashtra on 20th November, 2024.
Caveat: The image displayed in the media report mentioned above contains photographs of voters also. So probably this image might be of the voter lists provided to the polling agent(s) for use on the day of polling. We cannot ascertain whether this list with photographs was used during the Lok Sabha polls or the later Vidhan Sabha polls held in Maharashtra in 2024 because the voter list we have downloaded from the ECI's portal does not contain any photographs as per ECI's policy to protect the privacy of voters.
Our findings:
1) The name of Ms. Sushama Gupta (not Sushma Gupta as mentioned in the above media story) occurs multiple times in the attached voter list of 286- Nilemore Polling Station which is located at St. Mary's High School, Ground Floor, North side, Room No. 9, Nilemore (the complete voter list is given in 1st attachment below);
2) The name of Ms. Sushama Gupta occurs five times (5) on page no. 26 and once on page 44 of the voter list. Out of the five occurrences on page no. 26 only one of them carries the "deleted" watermark across the entry as of today. This is the entry connected with the 390-Tulinj locality displayed in the image published in the aforementioned media story. All six entries carry different EPIC numbers and all five entries for Nilemore locality are shown as live;
3) In five of these six entries, Ms. Sushama Gupta is shown as a female aged 39 years, whose husband is one Sanjay Gupta, with House No. displayed as Mata Jivdani Chowl;
4) In one of the five live entries, the individual's name is shown only as "gupta Gupta" (EPIC: WEH8746877) but with the same age, husband's name and House No. This is intriguing as to how the surname and the first name were allowed to be identical;
5) The image of the voter list with photographs displayed in the aforementioned media report does not match with the voter list downloaded from ECI's portal in one respect. The serial nos. do not match. In the image displayed in the media report, the serial nos. shown for this individual are: 1316, 1319, 1320, 1321, 1322 and 1323. In the voter list which we downloaded from the ECI's portal, the serial nos. against which this individual is named are: 712, 715, 716, 717 (deleted entry), 718 and 1235. This is another intriguing discrepancy. One plausible explanation could be that the image displayed in the aforementioned media report might have been from the voter list used during the Lok Sabha elections held earlier in April-May 2024;
6) When we searched the ECI's database using the "Search in Electoral Roll" facility applying all six EPIC numbers, we found the same name popping up six times today, with the same personal details as mentioned above (the screenshots of the search results are in the 2nd attachment below). The entry shown as deleted on the voter list did not contain a similar remark on this database;
7) Last but not the least, when we clicked the "View Details" link given against each entry we found that the same District Election Officer (Mr. Govind Bobde), the same Electoral Registration Officer (Mr. Shekhar Ghadge) and the same Booth Level Officer (Ms. Pallavi Sawant) are named against all these entries (in the 2nd attachment the search result page for each entry is followed by a screenshot of the Voter Details Page). The mobile phone nos. of the ERO and the BLO are also given. It is intriguing that none of these officers discovered the multiple entries at the time of finalising the voter list for two rounds of elections, namely the Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabha elections.
Concluding Remarks
This is but one claim of discrepancy being reported by the media which we were able to cross check given the very limited human resources available at our disposal. It is hoped that other electoral reforms advocates will cross check other claims about voter list discrepancies and publish their results. The ERO, DEO, the Chief Electoral Officer, Maharashtra and the ECI have much to account for to the citizenry.
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*Director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, New Delhi. Click here for first attachment, here for the second attachment

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