Hyderabad/National: In a move that will raise privacy concerns, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has pretty much made linking Aadhar to voter ID mandatory. A notification from the ECI to election officers in Haryana showed that Booth Level Officers (BLO) have been asked to collect Aadhar data for verification.
The notification was released by the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) on Twitter a day earlier on August 18. The IFF said that the BLO asked one of its staffers to provide their Aadhar numbers during a house-to-house visit. The foundation claimed that its staff was told that their name from the electoral roll would be deleted if Aadhar was not provided.
In fact, a few weeks ago, the Chief Electoral Officer of Telangana held a meeting with representatives of all political parties on this matter. Congress ex-MLA Marri Shashidhar Reddy, who attended it, had raised the same issue then too.
“The ECI has introduced Form 6B, under which one has to mandatorily provide their Aadhar number for voter ID verification. There is no option to not link it. It only asks if you have it, and to tick a box if one does not have Aadhar,” he told Siasat.com.
Concerns of mass deletion of names from electoral rolls
Aside from privacy concerns, it may be recalled that the linking of Aadhar to voter IDs had resulted in mass deletions of names from electoral rolls in Telangana. About 22 lakh names had been deleted in a botched exercise then.
The issue came to light in a big way when scores of people in Telangana complained about their names being deleted from the electoral rolls in the 2018 state polls. It added credence to the allegation by Congress and activists that the Election Commission and state government deleted over 22 lakh names from the electoral rolls between 2015 and 2018, without informing voters about the Aadhar linkage.
Then Chief Electoral Officer of Telangana, Rajat Kumar, accepted that many voters could indeed not exercise their rights and said that a mistake had been made for which he apologised to the public. The issue then too was raised by Marri Shashidhar Reddy, who reportedly found several notices that were not served to those whose names were deleted from the rolls.
The Aadhar linkage was done when a pilot project was undertaken in the GHMC limits of Hyderabad by the state government and the ECI. However, later after the 2018 state polls, a Right to Information response query on the issue found the then CEO admitting before the ECI that door-to-door verification had not been conducted properly.
Earlier, union law minister Kiren RIjju told NDTV that linking of Aadhaar and voter ID cards will be “voluntary and not compulsory”. His response came due to protests against the controversial Election Laws (Amendment) Bill and how it was rushed through Parliament.
The IFF, which fights for privacy laws in India, said that the linking of Aadhar and voter ID cards has been done in a technical way by making it compulsory for those who have Aadhar. “The letter we received from the BLO refers to a previous letter dated August 16, 2022, that asked BLOs to start house-to-house visits for ‘voluntary’ collection of Aadhaar details. But clearly, our Staffer’s experience shows that this process is not voluntary at all,” it said on Twitter.
Form 6 amended to make Aadhar Linking mandatory
The foundation added that the Ministry of Law and Justice amended Form, and introduced Form 6B, which makes it compulsory for those who have Aadhar to provide it for door-to-door verification.
“In fact, @MLJ_GoI went one step further away from the ‘voluntary’ promise & recently amended Form 6, introducing Form 6B to the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. These forms make it compulsory for those who have Aadhaar to provide their Aadhaar Numbers in order to vote. 4/7,” said the IFF.
‘Aadhaar is neither proof of citizenship nor residence.’
The UIDAI in the past has made it clear that an Aadhar card is now proof of citizenship or residence. The IFF also said that having Aadhaar doesn’t mean one wants to link it and all its data with the voter ID. “All adult citizens have the right to vote & it can’t be restricted due to a reluctance to give Aadhaar when there are other reliable ways to ID,” said the IFF.
Interestingly, after it tweeted all of this, the Chief Electoral Officer, Haryana, responded to the IFF. “Submission of Aadhar number in Form 6B is voluntary. No entry in the electoral roll shall be deleted on the ground of the non-submission of the Aadhar number. Purpose of obtaining Aadhar number is for authentication of electors’ entries in electoral roll & extending better electoral services,” said the CEO.
