NEW DELHI, Mar 15: The Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar has called for a meeting with Union Home Secretary, Legislative Secretary and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to explore linking of voter ID with Aadhaar card.
The commission sources on Saturday said Mr Kumar would be meeting the officials on March 18. The meeting comes amidst the opposition allegations of manipulation in voters’ lists.
The ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, where Assembly elections are due in 2026, had recently flagged the issuance of duplicate Electoral Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) numbers to voters in different States. Opposition parties have raised the matter in Parliament and outside. Leader of Opposition in Rahul Gandhi took it up in the Lok Sabha. Earlier, the Congress had alleged manipulation of voters lists during the Maharashtra Assembly polls.
The Election Commission had clarified that the duplication had occurred due to manual errors made before the ERONET digital platform for voter enrolment was introduced. It had also assured that voters with same EPIC numbers registered in different States could still vote using their domicile documents. The EC had promised to resolve the issue in the three months.
The ECI first tried the Aadhaar-voter ID linking in February 2015 when it launched the National Electoral Rolls Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP) to address duplicate entries in electoral rolls. It had linked more than 300 million voters in a span of three months.
However, the Supreme Court, in an interim order in August 2015, held that the mandatory use of Aadhaar should only be for welfare schemes and PAN linking. Following this order, the NERPAP exercise was discontinued.
The Centre has informed Parliament that the Aadhaar-voter ID seeding exercise was “process-driven” and no target or timelines have been set for the proposed linking. It has also clarified that the names of those who do not link their Aadhaar details with their voter IDs will not be struck off the electoral rolls.
According to section 23 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, as amended by the Election Laws (Amendment) Act in 2021, electoral registration officers are required to ask existing or prospective voters to provide their Aadhaar number for establishing their identity on a voluntary basis.
Meanwhile, the Trinamool Congress on Saturday said the meeting convened by the CEC was a “face-saving measure.” “First, three statements. Now this meeting. This is just a face-saving measure. We will keep a hawk-eye vigil till the elections,” Sagarika Ghose, deputy leader of Trinamool Congress in the Rajya Sabha, said.
A 10-member delegation of the party met the full Election Commission bench on March 11 over the issue of duplicate EPIC numbers. In a memorandum to the ECI, the party had also said there had been “credible allegations of Aadhaar cards being cloned and the use of these cloned Aadhaar cards to facilitate fake voter registrations.”
(Manas Dasgupta)
