Notification allowing linking of Aadhaar & voter ID issued

Notification allowing linking of Aadhaar & voter ID issued

In News:

• The central government has notified the rules allowing the linking of Aadhar numbers with electoral roll data.

What’s in Today’s Article:

• Representation of People Act
• News Summary

Representation of People Act

• The Parliament passed two laws to provide a legal framework for the conduct of elections:
  • The Representation of the People Act, 1950,
  • The Representation of the People Act, 1951
• The 1950 Act provides for
  • allocation of seats and delimitation of constituencies for elections,
  • qualifications of voters,
  • preparation of electoral rolls.
• The 1951 Act regulates the actual conduct of elections and by-elections. It provides for the conduct of elections and offences and disputes related to elections.
  • It also deals with the registration of political parties, the qualifications and disqualifications for membership of the Houses.

News Summary

• The government has issued four notifications to give effect to the electoral reforms enacted late last year.
  • The Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021 was passed by Parliament late last year.
• These notifications have amended the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 and Conduct of Election Rules, 1961.

Changes made

• Linking of voter ID with Aadhaar
  • The notification specifies April 1, 2023 as the date on or before which every person whose name exists in the electoral rolls may intimate his Aadhaar number.
  • Voluntary linkage of voter ID with Aadhaar to weed out bogus and duplicate entries in electoral rolls.
    • The government has said that the linking of Aadhaar numbers to electoral rolls is voluntary.
    • However, privacy experts have pointed out that there is an absence of choice in the forms.
    • The only exception is for those who don’t have a Aadhaar number.
    • Any false declaration is liable to prosecution. Hence, this becomes a mandatory provision for linking Aadhaar with electoral rolls.
• To ease the enrolment schedule for first-time voters
  • The notification allows four qualifying dates in a year — January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1 —for those above 18 years, to register themselves as voters.
    • The Representation of the People Act currently allows voter registration for those who have attained the age of 18 only once.
    • Only those who have attained the age of 18 years as on January 1 of that year or before is eligible to be enrolled in the voters’ list.
    • Due to only one cut-off date, a person turning 18 years on January 2 cannot be registered and needs to wait for the next year.
  • Now enrolment of first-time voters will be allowed four times a year.
    • Amendment to Section 14(b) of the RP Act was done for this purpose.
• Make voting by special procedure gender neutral
  • Currently, an Army man’s wife is entitled to be enrolled as a service voter, but a woman Army officer’s husband is not allowed.
    • Section 60 of the RPA refers to “such wife being ordinarily residing with that person” for allowing enrolment as a service voter.
  • Hence, the proposal is to make this provision gender neutral.
    • It is believed that the Act will now be amended to replace the word “wife” with “spouse”.
    • This was implemented by amending Section 20(6) of the Act.
• More power to Election Commission (EC)
  • The amendment seeks to empower the EC to requisition premises for any purpose related to elections and not just for creating polling stations and storage of ballot boxes.
  • The amendment to Section 160(1)A of the RP Act has been done to empower the EC in this regard.

Previous attempt to link voter card and Aadhaar number

• The EC had in 2015 taken up linking of voter card and Aadhaar number as part of its National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme.
  • Around 32 crore Aadhaar numbers were seeded at that time.
  • However, this initiative was halted by the Supreme Court in August 2015 via its famous protection of privacy judgement in the Puttaswamy case.
    • This Puttaswamy case had challenged the validity of Aadhar scheme and Aadhar Act, 2016”.
    • In August 2015, the Supreme Court passed an interim order in this case.
    • The order prohibited Aadhaar from being used for any purpose other than the state-facilitated distribution of food grain and cooking fuel such as kerosene and LPG.
• The ECI, in 2019, approached the Law Ministry with a fresh proposal seeking changes in the electoral laws for the seeding of voter cards with Aadhar number.
  • The ministry had asked the Election Commission to list the safeguards built into the electoral roll data platform.
  • Upon listing the safeguards by EC, Law Ministry, in 2020, gave the go-ahead.

Possible reasons behind the linkage of Aadhar with Voter ID:

• Improving the accuracy of the electoral rolls, by weeding out duplication and misrepresentation in electoral rolls;
• Assistance in the ECI’s plans to implement advanced mechanisms such as electronic and internet-based voting;
• Giving ‘remote’ voting rights to domestic migrants; and
• To facilitate proxy voting which may require Aadhaar backing for voter verification.