BMC Elections 2026: 1.68 lakh duplicate voter entries were discovered after over 11 lakh were checked
BMC Elections 2026: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has completed reviewing 11,01,505 voter data from Mumbai that were identified as potential duplicates. Nearly 1.68 lakh entries, or roughly 15% of the total, were found to be actual duplicate registrations, either within the same ward or across other wards. Of these voters, 24,721 have already filled out Form “A,” which explicitly indicates which ward they want to keep their voting registration. In order to guarantee that each qualified voter’s name appears in just one ward’s electoral register, civic authorities verified that the verification of the remaining duplicate records would be finished by December 27.
The municipal organization started a massive effort to find and remove duplicate voter records as it gets ready for the 2026 BMC elections. Officials verified 1,68,357 submissions as genuine duplicates by using a specialized software-based verification method in addition to door-to-door field inspections. The goal of this effort is to keep the voter list accurate and transparent before the important municipal elections. According to authorities, the procedure is being constantly watched to avoid mistakes and guarantee that valid voters are not disqualified or unfairly impacted throughout the verification process.
In order to confirm duplicate voter registrations, municipal workers have visited over 53,800 homes in Mumbai in recent days. During this procedure, authorities discovered that over 79,000 voters had their names listed in several wards, and almost 89,000 voters were registered more than once inside the same ward. The extensive outreach emphasizes how difficult it is to keep up-to-date voter lists in a city where people move around a lot. Officials pointed out that correctly detecting real duplicates has been greatly aided by human verification.
About 57% of all duplicate voter instances have now been validated, according to a senior municipal official. Following the completion of the remaining cases, which should happen in the coming days, political parties will get the final and updated voter list. L Ward in Kurla had the most duplicate entries (16,532), followed by K West in Andheri West (12,010 instances) and R South in Kandivali (11,618 duplicate voter registrations), according to ward-by-ward research.
Officials clarified that voters who were found to be duplicates were asked to designate the polling place where they want to cast their ballots and were marked with a double star on the electoral registers. Voters will have to turn in an affidavit at the polling place if they were unable to be reached during field verification. They will state in this affidavit that they haven’t cast a ballot at any other polling place. The goal of the law is to protect legitimate voters’ ability to vote while preventing duplicate voting.
In the meanwhile, the city administration made it clear that older citizens and those with disabilities would not be permitted to vote at home during the BMC elections. The State Election Commission’s regulations prohibit home or postal voting for municipal body elections, in contrast to Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. All voters must thus go to the voting places they have been allotted. Nonetheless, some 63,000 government and BMC workers as well as election-related police officers would be allowed to cast votes by mail.