Over 50cr link voter ID cards with with Aadhaar: EC officials

Of the nearly 95 crore electors registered, more than 50% (around 50 crore), have voluntarily chosen to link their voter ID cards to their Aadhaar numbers, election commission (EC) officials familiar with the matter said.

The officials added that the deduplication process is yet to begin and no entries will be automatically deleted without booth level officer verification.

“Nearly 50% of the total voters have linked their Aadhaar cards to their voter ids,” an official said.

“The linking is not compulsory but voluntary.”

At present, the commission uses two systems to eliminate duplication of voter ids — demographically similarly entries and photographically similar entries.

Parliament last year approved a legislation that allows election officials to ask registered voters to provide Aadhaar details, despite resistance from opposition benches, who demanded further scrutiny of contentious provisions by a parliamentary standing committee.

The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill 2021 was passed by voice vote hours after it was tabled by law minister Kiren Rijiju.

The bill proposes to allow election commission officials to seek Aadhaar details of registered voters on a voluntary basis and makes the language of the Representation of the People Act (RP Act), 1950, gender neutral.

The provisions related to the linking of the unique Aadhaar numbers with voter identity records was proactively debated by the opposition, claiming it was a violation of Supreme Court orders and a threat to privacy. It could eventually lead to mass disenfranchisement of voters, opposition parliamentarians claimed.

Verification through Aadhaar will lead to the elimination of bogus voting, the law minister countered, slamming the opposition for their lack of understanding of the proposed modification.

“They are opposing it unnecessarily,” Rijiju said.

He cited findings of the standing committee on law to justify the government’s decision.

In August this year, the commission began a drive to link voter ID cards with Aadhaar numbers.