opinion | Linking Aadhaar with Voter ID will end fake voting
The Lok Sabha on Monday passed a major electoral reform bill, which provides for voluntary linking of Aadhaar card with voter ID, amid strong opposition from the opposition. The opposition parties demanded that the bill be sent to a joint select committee for examination.
Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said the bill is a significant electoral reform and a parliamentary standing committee has already favored linking of voter ID with Aadhaar. He said that this would curb the menace of multiple nominations of the same person as a voter at different places. He said the Bill seeks to create a legal framework for linking electoral data with Aadhaar card.
Opposing the bill, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said, “You cannot bulldoze a major legislative document which has many loopholes”. Another Congress leader Manish Tewari said, the Aadhaar Act is “very clear. This is for targeted distribution of financial and other subsidies and benefits, while voting is a legal right.” AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi said the law can be used to “profile voters and deprive them of their franchise”. The CPI(M) said the new bill threatens to violate both the secrecy of the vote by diluting the principle of secret ballot and violating the fundamental right to privacy of the voters.
Kiren Rijiju said the apprehensions being expressed by the opposition on the violation of the right to privacy by such an association are “unfounded”. Linking Aadhaar with voter ID is voluntary and not mandatory, he said. He said the Supreme Court judgment of September 26, 2018 upholding the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar Act while ensuring the right to privacy is being misinterpreted. In August 2019, the Election Commission proposed that the government should amend election laws to empower election registration officers to obtain Aadhaar numbers of existing and new voters “for the purpose of establishing identity”.
Rijiju said, there is already a provision in the Bill which says that no application for enrollment as a voter can be rejected in the absence of Aadhaar unless the voter provides alternate documents as prescribed by the Election Commission. Is. He said that with this step of linking Aadhaar with voter ID card, bogus voting will end and voter list will be reliable.
It should be understood that this bill has not been brought in haste. This issue of linkage has been in discussion in various forums for a long time. Opposition parties, especially the Congress, had earlier demanded linking of voter ID with Aadhaar. Now he seems to have reversed his stance.
Let me clarify one fact. In April 2018, the Madhya Pradesh Congress had written to the then Chief Election Commissioner, seeking linking of voter lists with Aadhaar to check bogus voting ahead of the assembly elections. The state Congress had then alleged that there are 30-40,000 bogus voters in almost every constituency and the details of around 45 lakh voters need to be verified and checked. Similarly, in 2019, Maharashtra NCP had suggested linking of voter ID with Aadhaar to prevent fake voting and the then Chief Minister and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis had agreed to the NCP’s suggestion at that time.
Multiple enrollment of the same voter at different locations is one of the major problems in electoral database management. One of the reasons for this could be that voters frequently change their place of residence and get enrolled in their new places without deleting their previous nominations. This problem of multiple enrollments can be easily solved by being linked with Aadhaar. Once the voter ID is linked with Aadhaar, the voter list data system will immediately alert the voter registration authorities about the voter’s previous enrollment, whenever one applies for a new registration. This will help in cleaning the entire voter list database and fake voting can be put to an end forever.
The apprehensions being raised by the opposition about the violation of the right to privacy seem to be baseless. The vote cast by a voter inside the polling station is always kept secret. Already, the Center and states have used Aadhaar as a tool to eliminate lakhs of fake ration cards across India, and the names of people who have slashed subsidies under various heads have been eliminated. Linking Aadhaar will not violate anyone’s privacy. On the other hand, the problem of fake voting will be curbed in one go.
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