How to Ensure a Accurate and Transparent Voter List In SIR? Link with Aadhaar
In any election, the most critical item is the voter list. If you get the voter list wrong, you can never have a fair and transparent election. It is the responsibility of the election officer to ensure that the voter list is accurate. It is also the responsibility of the voters to ensure they register themselves in time for voting and provide correct and updated information to the election officer.
Special Intensive Revision (SIR)
In Bihar, the Election Commission of India (ECI) is doing a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter list with the objective of updating the voter list. This includes deleting voters who have migrated or have expired. The opposition parties are not only doubting the revision of the voter list but also the intention of the ECI. Now the opposition parties are trying the extend the doubt on the voter list to other state elections and the national election too. Who is right and who is wrong?
Both are wrong!
Aadhaar – Digital and biometric database of citizens and residents
Indian has a population of around 150 crore people, and around 100 crore people are above 18 and eligible to vote. Preparing, maintaining and updating a voter list of 100 crore people is not a small task. There are bound to be some errors, and we cannot expect 100% accuracy. But an accuracy of 99.99% is very much feasible due to Aadhaar.
Over the last 15 years, India has invested in and created an amazing digital database of its citizens with their biometric data, including fingerprint and IRIS scan. The Aadhaar database is one of the most modern databases of citizens across the world, and many developed countries, including the USA, do not have such an extensive digital database with biometric data of citizens.
Multiple Voter Lists – Duplication of effort and wastage of taxpayers’ money
Currently, in India, the Election Commission of India is responsible for National and state elections. The State Election Commissions (SECs) are responsible for only local body elections in the state and not the state election. Hence, ECI maintains one voter list, which is used in national elections. ECI also maintains state-wise voter lists, which must be a subset of the national voter list. SECs of all 28 states maintain their own voter list that is used for local body elections.
SEC’s voter list is not a subset of the ECI voter list. This is crazy. This leads to duplication of efforts at the cost of taxpayers’ money, but also leads to a lot of inconvenience for the voters, too. They have to separately update their data in both the voter list, and most Indians are not aware that ECI and SECs maintain separate voter lists.
What the Election Commission of India (ECI) should do is maintain a single voter list for the nation, a digital database with voter ID linked with Aadhaar ID. As the Aadhaar ID is used for multiple purposes, including mobile connections, bank account opening, passport, UPI, etc, the Aadhaar ID is regularly updated by the citizens. If there is a change of address, demise of the citizen, etc, the data is updated in the database as citizens need to update the same to be able to take various government and other services. This with help automatically update the voter list too.
Advantage of Aadhaar
Aadhaar also has the enormous advantage of being a biometric database of citizens. It makes offline and online authentication of voters accurate and foolproof. Sooner or later, India will have to move to online voting, and at that time biometric database would help in smooth and accurate authentication of voters online. Even at voting booths, Aadhaar is a better database for authentication, as it can help weed out false voting and impersonation with the help of biometrics.
A biometric database also ensures that duplicate entries in the database are not possible. Each biometric data point is checked for uniqueness before registration in the database. As Indians migrate from one state to another for jobs, education, marriage, etc, it is possible that a citizen is registered in more than one state for voting. Most government processes, including voter registration, are so bureaucratic that very few voters take the pain to deregister from the voter list of the previous state. Citizens generally focus only on registering in the new state. Aadhaar’s biometric data can ensure that automatic deregistration happens when a citizen registers in a new state.
SEC’s voter list should be a subset of ECI’s voter list. Automatically, based on the address of the voter in the Aadhaar, the voter list should be updated. The voter list of each local body election, each municipality election, and each panchayat election would automatically flow from the ECI’s digital database linked with Aadhaar. SECs would not be required to maintain and update the database. Citizens would also not need to separately update their voter ID as it will automatically get updated with Aadhaar. This will save a lot of taxpayers’ money and a lot of effort for both election officials and citizens.
If Aadhaar linking has so many advantages, then why is ECI not linking the Voter ID with Aadhaar?
When Aadhaar was introduced, many political parties opposed Aadhaar on grounds of privacy. The Government of India went on the back foot and agreed in front of the court that Aadhaar would be for the targeted delivery of subsidies and benefits, not for purposes like linking with voter IDs or general surveillance.
During 2013–2015, Supreme Court hearings in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, the government’s lawyers explicitly told the Court that Aadhaar would be “voluntary” and used only for welfare schemes, subsidies, and financial transactions like LPG subsidies, MNREGA payments, pensions, etc. Multiple interim Supreme Court orders (e.g., dated 23 September 2013 and 11 August 2015) restricted Aadhaar’s use to certain subsidy schemes and said it could not be made mandatory for other purposes. The Court also directed that Aadhaar should not be linked with voter databases, PAN cards, or used for unrelated services until the constitutional validity was decided.
In 2015, the ECI started the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP) to link Aadhaar with voter IDs to eliminate duplicates. The Supreme Court’s 11 August 2015 interim order stopped this linking, citing privacy concerns and the limits on Aadhaar usage set earlier. At that stage, the Government accepted the Court’s restriction.
In 2016, the Aadhaar Act was passed. The official statement of objects described Aadhaar as a tool for the targeted delivery of subsidies and services funded from the Consolidated Fund of India. No mention was made of voter ID linkage as a permitted purpose.
Post-2018, there has been a shift in the stance of the government. After the Puttaswamy privacy judgment (2017) and Aadhaar’s partial upholding by the Supreme Court (2018), the government began pushing for wider linking. In December 2021, Parliament amended the Representation of the People Act to allow voluntary Aadhaar–voter ID linking, officially reversing the earlier limitation.
Still, Aadhaar linking is voluntary and not compulsory as per the law. The government needs to change that to allow ECI to link Voter ID with Aadhaar. The current controversy is the right opportunity to do that. The opposition, which was against the Aadhaar Voter ID linking, is now demanding a digital copy of the voter list. If privacy is the issue, then opposition should not be given access to the voter list. Opposition cannot eat the cake and have it too. If they want accuracy and transparency, then they need to allow Voter ID and Aadhaar linking.
But Aadhaar is not proof of citizenship, how can it be linked with Voter ID?
Yes, Aadhaar is not proof of citizenship. Aadhaar is a proof of identity and proof of residence in India. It is issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to anyone who has resided in India for at least 182 days in the previous 12 months, regardless of nationality. Foreign nationals legally residing in India (e.g., OCI cardholders, work visa holders) can also get Aadhaar. As per Section 9 of the Aadhaar Act, 2016: “The Aadhaar number or the authentication thereof shall not, by itself, confer any right of, or be proof of, citizenship or domicile.”
Aadhaar doesn’t prove citizenship, but voter rolls already require a citizenship check separately at the time of registration (via other documents like birth certificate, passport, etc.). When a voter is registering for the first time for voter ID, they will have to prove their citizenship with the help of other documents, like a birth certificate, passport, etc. The government can also mandate the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to keep a record of Aadhaar IDs issued to non-citizens. Aadhaar ID issued to non-citizens can be of a different number series and a different colour.
Aadhaar and Voter ID linking can also help the government with the problem of illegal migrants. It can help the government identify and record illegal migrants in India. This can prove very useful with problems like terrorism. If an illegal immigrant or a terrorist registers for Aadhaar, the government with get their biometric data in the form of fingerprint, iris scan and photograph. During terrorist activities, the biometric data would help in identifying the perpetrators.
Technology platform for voter registration from Right2Vote
Similar to national elections, even in smaller elections, the voter list is a crucial and controversial matter. To ensure fair and transparent elections, the election officers of these elections should ensure accuracy and transparency in the creation of the voter list.
Apart from eVoting services, Right2Vote also offers voter registration services. In the Right2Vote’s online voter registration platform, Right2Vote provide features like OTP based verification of mobile number and email ID to ensure accuracy of email ID and mobile number data, which is critical for online elections. Google Forms and other modes of data collection generally lead to clerical errors. OTP based verification at the time of registration eliminates these errors.
For the Election Commission of India and State Election Commissions, Right2Vote has also built a feature of online Aadhaar number updating and linking with Voter ID. Technology is not the limitation. Even the intention of ECI is not the limitation. The only limitation is senseless opposition to Aadhaar.
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