The Aadhaar voter ID linkage: thrusted or voluntary

The Bill was passed within 30 minutes of discussion in the Lok Sabha.

By Anoushka Sawhney

On December 29, 2021, Ram Nath Kovind, President of India gave assent to the

Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021. Among the four amendments that the Act

brings, one reform that is witnessing strong opposition is the linking of the Aadhaar

with the Voter ID.

The Act further amends the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the

Representation of the People Act, 1951. According to the major amendment to section

23 of the 1950 Act, the Electoral registration officer can ask a citizen to show their

Aadhaar card, as identity proof, at the time of the registration as a voter. 

It can also be asked from people who are already on the electoral list “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”. 

The Bill was introduced on December 20 by Kiren Rijiju, Union Law Minister of

India, and was passed in less than 30 minutes. Rijiju claimed that the linking of

Aadhaar with Voter ID is “voluntary” and is an attempt to eliminate duplicate Voter

ID cards. 

“It’s voluntary on paper because the Supreme Court says it can’t be mandatory. But, it

will become mandatory because you can't find duplicate voters unless you have

everybody’s Aadhaar,” said Srinivas Kodali, data and privacy researcher.

This is because Aadhaar provides a unique ID, which cannot be reproduced.

It is important to note that the Bill is proposed even when the option to link your

Aadhaar with the Voter ID is already available on the Election Commission Website. 

“Now, the electoral officer has been empowered to ask for the Aadhaar, which they

did not have the authority to earlier,” said Maansi Verma, Lawyer and founder of

Maadhyam. Earlier, one could show any ID, but now they can insist on showing the

Aadhaar, which “makes it mandatory”. 

The Bill was listed for discussion in the Rajya Sabha on the next day of the Lok Sabha

discussion and was allotted three hours. However, the Bill was passed within one

hour. 

During the proceedings of the passing of the Bill, as claimed by the parliament

members, many rules were broken. 

Anand Sharma, a member of the Indian National Congress, said that he is also a

member of the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) but is not aware of any

discussion on the Election Laws Amendment Bill in the last meeting of BAC.

Derek O’Brien, Trinamool Congress MP, quoting rule 69 subsection 4 said that the

Bill should have been “made available for two days before the day on which motion is

made” to provide time to MPs to read the Bill and for sending it to a select committee.

Later on, he was suspended from the house for throwing a rule book at the reporters’

table.

According to the Bill, “no application for inclusion of name in the electoral roll shall

be denied and no entries in the electoral roll shall be deleted for the inability of an

individual to furnish or intimate Aadhaar number due to such sufficient cause as may

be prescribed.”

However, the phrase “sufficient cause” is not clearly described. Verma said that this is

an “ingenious move” by the government, which it has been doing for a while now. 

“The law-making is left to the bureaucracy in the form of delegated legislation.”

She explains that in the law the clause has not been mentioned, but the government

can later through regulations prescribe what those sufficient causes are. 

They can be changed easily and are not required to be passed by the parliament. “The

government has made it easy for itself to give these sufficient causes in the future as

and when it wants to.”  

In effect, this can make something mandatory. “Having an Aadhaar today is optional,

but the government can later say that the sufficient clause did not mention not having

an Aadhaar.” Thereby taking away your right to vote. 

As part of the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme of

the Election Commission of India started in March 2015, which proposed to remove

fraud voters, 10% of the voter base was removed in Telangana during the state

elections in 2018. 

In 2016, the Jharkhand government had made it mandatory to link ration cards with

Aadhaar to remove duplicate cards. Later on, the government found 11.6 lakh cards

fake in September 2017. However, it was found that 88% of these cards were valid,

according to a study done by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) in

2020.

A Bill called Amendment to Birth and Death Registration Act, which is coming up

aims to link Aadhaar with the Birth and Death Register and the data can be used by

the government for maintenance of voter data, said Kodali.

“What’s happening is that the government is trying to make Aadhaar the primary

citizenship ID, but it was never meant to be that. It was always a residence ID.”

Door to door verification is required to make Aadhaar the citizenship ID and census is

the time this can happen, explains Kodali. This raises the concern of “NRC (National

Register of Citizens) with the census, which raises an important question of

citizenship”. If you are not recognised as a citizen, then you “lose your voting rights”. 

“There is this whole aspect of exclusion with citizenship that’s going to come.”

“The documents from 2010 show that Aadhaar was proposing e-voting,” said Kodali.

It has always been a plan to link Aadhaar with Voter ID for e-voting. 

Kodali explains that if I am voting from my house with a smartphone, I can pressurize

my wife and kids (18+) to vote for a particular party, or a political agent can go door

to door give money to people and ask them to show whom they have voted for. 

“E-voting simply kills secret ballot.” 

The Bill seemingly is a threat and is violative of the fundamental rights of a citizen. 

In the end, the question is, are we willing to put the very idea of the state, citizen,

constitution again at stake for electoral gains.

Cover image credit: Deccan Herald