PRAYAGRAJ, Jan. 15 -- District election offices across the Prayagraj division have been directed to verify more than 36.63 lakh suspected duplicate names in the panchayat electoral rolls. The exercise follows directions from the State Election Commission (SEC) after entries were found appearing in multiple locations during the ongoing voter list revision ahead of the three-tier panchayat elections. Officials said lists shared with district authorities show that 36,63,279 voters in the division may have their names appearing in more than one area. The verification exercise is aimed at ensuring that the electoral rolls include only eligible and genuine voters. Prayagraj district has the highest number of suspected duplicates at 14,14,036, followed by Pratapgarh with 11,44,579, Fatehpur with 7,93,295 and Kaushambi with 3,11,366. Election officials said detailed verification will be carried out to remove duplicate entries and update the voter lists accordingly. Former IAS officer and officer on special duty (OSD) to the SEC, Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh Kumar Mishra, has written to district magistrates across the state, stating that the provisional voter list published on December 23 had identified 57,67,410 voters whose names appeared in two or more locations. These duplicate entries have since been deleted. Officials said the verification process, earlier conducted block-wise, has now been made mandatory at the district level. District authorities have been instructed to complete the verification and submit updated lists to ensure inclusion of all valid voters in the final rolls. The three-tier panchayat elections are proposed to be held later this year. The revision of the 2021 voter list began last year, and the final publication is scheduled for mid-February. In this context, verification of suspected duplicate voters is currently underway across the division. The SEC has also released details of "duplicate groups" where names, gender, age and parents' names appear to match, indicating the possibility that the entries belong to the same individual. Across the four districts of the Prayagraj division, such cases total 6,79,730, including 3,42,141 in Prayagraj, 2,70,637 in Pratapgarh, 2,10,953 in Fatehpur and 99,569 in Kaushambi....