Centre notifies rules for linking of Aadhaar with electoral rolls

Press Trust of India

NEW DELHI: The government has amended the Registration of Electors Rules to allow linking Aadhaar details with voters list to weed out duplicate entries and making election law gender neutral for service voters.

The legislative department in the law ministry issued notifications on Friday night announcing that rules have been amended in line with the provisions of Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021 passed by Parliament in December last year.

The Registration of Electors (Amendment) Rules, 2022 will come into force on August 1.

A separate notification said people already enrolled in the voters list should intimate his or her Aadhaar number on or before April 1, 2023 to the officers concerned.

“In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (5) of section 23 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 (43 of 1950), the Central Government hereby notifies the 1st April, 2023 as the date on or before which every person whose name is included in the electoral roll may intimate his Aadhaar number in accordance with the said section,” read the notification.

The Election Laws (Amendment) Act seeks to allow electoral registration officers to seek Aadhaar number of people who want to register as voters “for the purpose of establishing the identity”.

It also seeks to allow the electoral registration officers to ask for Aadhaar numbers from “persons already included in the electoral roll for the purposes of authentication of entries in the electoral roll, and to identify registration of the name of the same person in the electoral roll of more than one constituency or more than once in the same constituency”.

A new form “6B” has been introduced to allow existing voters share their Aadhaar number.

THE REGISTRATION OF ELECTORS (AMENDMENT) RULES, 2022 WILL COME INTO FORCE ON AUGUST 1