ECI sets the ball rolling on linking voter ID card with Aadhaar,” and went on to say that the decision was made at a high-level meeting of the full Election Commission (EC), led by chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, with home secretary Govind Mohan; IT and electronics secretary S. Krishnan; UIDAI CEO Bhuvnesh Kumar; and EC technical experts.
In a statement, the Empowered Action Group of Leaders and Experts of the Congress stated that the EC must consult with all political parties and stakeholders and guarantee them that “there are sufficient guardrails to not deny a single eligible voter the right to vote”.
Aadhaar-EPIC Linkage: A Threat to the Integrity of India’s Election System?
The party should have realized that no number of ‘guardrails’ can protect a fundamentally defective and unlawful decision!
The EC stated that the connection of electors’ picture ID cards (EPIC) with Aadhaar will be done only in accordance with Article 326, which states that voting rights may only be granted to citizens, whereas an Aadhaar card just proves a person’s identification.
It further said that the linkage will take effect in accordance with Sections 23(4), 23(5), and 23(6) of the Representation of the People (RP) Act of 1950, as well as the Supreme Court’s decision in WP (civil) No. 177/2023.
“linkage would be done only in cases where Aadhaar has been submitted voluntarily by the elector” .
These pledges are mere language, given that the EC notified the Supreme Court in 2023 that it has already uploaded approximately 66.23 crore Aadhaar cards in the process of completing electoral records.
Prior to the Supreme Court ruling, the EC used coercive means to connect Aadhaar to bank accounts.
Let us now consider this move’s benefits. Even while legislation to permit this linking was being adopted in 2021, the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG) published a public statement signed by 104 former senior government workers, the majority of whom had direct expertise with voter registration and election administration.
The CCG’s statement described this as a risky action.
The CCG gave several reasons why the move to require Aadhaar verification for voter IDs is defective, bad in law, in bad faith and liable to potential misuse by the state:
1. The voter ID is issued on the basis of citizenship, while the Aadhaar card is issued on the basis of identity, without proof of citizenship being required. Section 9 of the Aadhaar Act, 2016 is clear that Aadhaar may not be used as proof of address, age, gender, citizenship or relationship.
Even if it is argued that voter IDs may be wrongly issued to non-citizens, verification by Aadhaar in no way solves this vexing problem; in fact, it is quite likely that even non-citizens may be registered as voters if Aadhaar is used as the only proof.
2. Unlike Aadhaar enrolments, which need only the production of existing documents, voter IDs are based on physical verification and “house visits” by a booth-level officer. The voter ID is certified by the electoral registration officer, while there is no certification of the Aadhaar by the UIDAI.
It cannot be ruled out that, with the linkage of Aadhaar numbers to voter IDs and in the absence of physical verification by the election authorities, efforts may be made to manipulate electoral rolls by getting persons registered as voters in constituencies where they do not reside.
3. The legislation which inserted sub-sections 4, 5 and 6 in Section 23 of the RP Act and clauses ‘hhha’ and ‘hhhb’ in Section 28(2) of the Act makes it evident that the Union government is dissembling when it states that linking the Aadhaar number to the voter ID is voluntary. These new insertions, in effect, make it mandatory for a voter to furnish her/his Aadhaar details or risk disenfranchisement.
The new sub-section 6 of Section 23 is especially revealing in its intentions. It states:
The possible mischief that this wording can give rise to is made amply clear by the subsequent clauses in the Amendment Act which permit the government to prescribe, under its rule-making powers, the process for the intimation of Aadhaar numbers by voters.
Rules made by the government require no parliamentary approval. A rule can, therefore, easily be introduced, making the furnishing of Aadhaar numbers a prerequisite for voter enrolment.
The scope for large-scale deletion of names from the electoral rolls can then become a distinct possibility, given that many existing voters may not (or may choose not to) furnish their Aadhaar details to the electoral registration officer.
There is also the likelihood that the UIDAI’s powers to omit or deactivate Aadhaar numbers under Section 23(g) of the Aadhaar Act could lead to widespread deletions from the electoral rolls.
4. The experience to date in attempting to clean up the database registries of other government programmes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the public distribution scheme using the Aadhaar database has been discouraging: the names of many beneficiaries have been allegedly arbitrarily deleted from systems without any notice, resulting in mass disentitlement.
5. Linking Aadhaar numbers to voter IDs will open the floodgates for the illegal profiling and targeting of voters, especially in the run-up to elections, when the model code of conduct is not in place.
There is a distinct possibility that voter IDs linked to Aadhaar cards and thence to mobile phones could be linked to social media. This social media can be linked to algorithms that are in turn linked to user interests/views. Without a robust data protection law and accompanying regulatory mechanisms in place, voter profiling, selective exclusion and targeted campaigns are all possible.
6. The 2016 presidential campaign in the US brought to light the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Justice B.N. Srikrishna, former judge of the Supreme Court, who chaired the expert committee that drafted the Data Protection Bill, categorically condemned the linkage of voter IDs with Aadhaar as “the most dangerous situation”.
His graphic warning was that “instead of having a Cambridge Analytica you’ll have a Delhi Analytica, a Mumbai Analytica, a Calcutta Analytica.
Till date, neither has the EC responded to nor answered any of these serious concerns which it is duty-bound to do.
In the meantime, the apprehension expressed in (3) above has come true in the way Form 6b (which was introduced to collect the Aadhaar numbers of voters) has been structured. At present this form lacks options for voters to abstain from providing their Aadhaar number; it offers just two choices: either provide your Aadhaar number or declare that “I am not able to furnish my Aadhaar because I don’t have Aadhaar number.”
The Union law ministry is to amend this, but the voter will have to offer an explanation as to why they are not providing their Aadhaar number.
This is nothing but coercing the voter and a fraud on the registration process.
There are also serious issues on the very integrity of the Aadhaar document. The Union government said that of a total of about 82.93 crore Aadhaar enrolments generated by FY25, about 9.73 crore were rejected for duplication, quality or technical reasons.
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