Linking Aadhaar to voter ID: Why the law had to be amended, what govt says

The Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021 came into force today amidst heated protests from the opposition in Parliament. Here’s a look at what the new law is about, the concerns around it and the government’s counterargument to naysayers.  

Why the law had to be amended

One of the biggest problems in the voter database is multiple registrations by voters, enabling them to cast their vote many times or proxies casting their votes for them. Although electronic voting machines (EVMs) have eliminated this problem to some extent, there is still duplication. This could be because people have changed residence many times, have same names or have got enrolled in new places without deleting/cancelling the previous enrolment.

Several standing committees attached to the Ministry of Law and Justice — of which Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Indian National Congress (INC) MPs, who are currently vociferously objecting to the amendments, were also members — said the law should be amended. (Today, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy of the TMC conceded he had been part of the standing committee but added that his attempt to append a dissent note to the standing committee report was rejected by the chairman.)

In 2015, the central government introduced the National Election Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP), and during the Aadhaar challenge, the Supreme Court passed an interim order on August 11, 2015, asking the Election Commission of India (ECI) to suspend Aadhaar-voter linkage.

In the current Act, this is voluntary.

It is also voluntary for another reason: It could be violative of the Supreme Court order in the Justice KS Puttaswamy (retd) and Anr vs Union Of India case (the famous Aadhaar judgement), which limits the use of Aadhaar authentication solely for welfare programme verification and to link with PAN numbers for the purposes of income tax.

What are opposition fears?

There has been misuse of Aadhaar data when it has been used in elections. In 2018, the chief electoral officer of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh linked Aadhaar data with voter identity cards. According to activists, people found out that at least 5.5 million voters had been disenfranchised. There was so much protest that the government had to roll it back. There are numerous other cases.

Says Jagdeep Chhokar, leading activist for electoral reform and founder of Association for Democratic Rights: “The problems faced by lay people in trying to use Aadhaar are widely known. Fingerprints and even the iris not matching are widespread. Also, the assumption that linking the Aadhaar database with the voter ID/EPIC database will enhance the authenticity of the voter ID data is on extremely slippery ground given widespread data quality issues in the Aadhaar database.” He went on to add, “On the contrary, this might even dilute the sanctity of records in the voter ID database. Data quality issues in the Aadhaar database — a result of inadequate enrolment practices and lack of effective correction mechanisms — have been extensively documented. The UIDAI has itself admitted so before various courts, and multiple courts have refused to accept Aadhaar as proof of birth or identification. This actually has the potential of increasing voter fraud.”

There are other worries. MPs say India currently has no data protection law, and the current personal data protection 

Bill has wide exceptions for the government. Any attempts to link Aadhaar to the voter IDs would lead to demographic information, which has been linked to Aadhaar, being linked to the voter database. 

This creates the possibilities for disenfranchisement based on identity, of increased surveillance, and targeted advertisements and commercial exploitation of private sensitive data.

What the government says

All that the opposition wants to do is ensure duplication and fraud in voting continues, says the government. Its argument is that this is particularly rampant in Assam and West Bengal where minorities live in large numbers and constitute the voter base of the Congress and the TMC. All that the law does is allow electoral registration officers to seek Aadhaar number of people who want to register as voters “for the purpose of establishing the identity”. The electoral registration officers can now ask for Aadhaar number from “persons already included in the electoral roll for the purposes of authentication of entries in electoral roll, and to identify registration of name of the same person in the electoral roll of more than one constituency or more than once in the same constituency,” says the government.

The amended law makes it clear that “no application for inclusion of name in the electoral roll shall be denied and no entries in the electoral roll shall be deleted for inability of an individual to furnish or intimate Aadhaar number due to such sufficient cause as may be prescribed.” Such people will be allowed to furnish other alternative documents.