‘Lack of Aadhaar won’t affect voting rights’
NEWDELHI:After controversy dogged a proposal by the Election Commission (EC) to link voter ID cards to Aadhaar, Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa said on Friday that lack of the unique identity number would not take away any citizen’s right to vote.
“If you don’t have an Aadhaar card, it doesn’t mean you can’t vote,” Lavasa told Hindustan Times.
“The Right to Vote is guaranteed under the Representation of the People’s Act, 1951,” he added.
Lavasa’s remarks come in the wake of the law ministry giving its in-principle approval to the EC’s proposal to link Aadhaar with voter ID cards. The poll panel had first made the recommendation in 2015, following which the proposal went on the back-burner as the Supreme
Court addressed privacy concerns surrounding the Aadhaar Act, 2016.
Another senior EC official concurred with Lavasa. “The right to vote is supreme,” the official said, requesting anonymity. “We can’t deny anyone the right to vote, Aadhaar card or not.”
The official added that if the proposal becomes law, the EC will “enforce” it. “It is optional, but if it becomes a law, we will try to enforce it,” the official said.
The proposed law aims to change the Representation of the People’s Act in order to link the two documents. At the same time, under Aadhaar Act, an Aadhaar number itself is not mandatory.
The EC’s move to link the two is an attempt to create an “errorfree electoral roll”.
“In order to ensure preparation of an error-free electoral roll, and to prevent duplication of entries, a proposal to amend the Representation of the People’s Act 1951 to enable linking of the electoral data with the Aadhaar system has been received from the Election Commission,” the Law Ministry said in its response to a question in Parliament on Wednesday.
Senior EC officials had earlier met the law secretary and the ministry’s legal team three weeks ago to discuss whether the privacy concerns flagged by the Supreme Court had been addressed.
“Many security safeguards have been instituted to ensure that there is no data breach,” said the above mentioned official.
The EC held out a similar assurance last month. “At the application level, various protocols like two-factor authentication encryption… algorithm communication only through https protocol, and frequent security audits of applications are ensured. Electoral roll database system does not enter into the Aadhaar ecosystem and the system is only used for the authentication purpose keeping a tight air gap between the two systems.”
According to another EC official, Aadhaar linkage is a “means to an end”.
“This may help achieve the long-term goal of remote voting, that is, to ensure those who are away from where their voter ID is issued would be able to cast their votes,” the senior official said.