The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 which allow the linking of Aadhaar to voter ID will help remove duplicates in the electoral rolls.
The Rajya Sabha on Tuesday passed the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 amid strong protest from the opposition. The new Bill will allow the linking of Aadhaar numbers to electoral roll data to identfy and remove fake voters. The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 has already been passed in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
The Bill was based on the Election Commission of India's proposals. The linking of Aadhaar with voter ID will provide an additional tool to authenticate a voter’s identity said former Chief Election Commissioner OP Rawat to a leading media over a telephonic interview.
The Bill will enable the Election Commission of India (ECI) to go ahead with the voluntary linking of Aadhaar with voter ID. This exercise was started by the ECI in 2015 and was stopped when the Supreme Court stayed on a PIL all processes asking for Aadhaar.
However, some opposition parties have raised concerns that linking the Aadhaar card with the voter ID card will lead to privacy breaches and mass disenfranchisement.
One of the important benefits of linking Aadhaar with voter ID is to remove duplicates in the electoral rolls. At present, the ECI has to use deduplication software, photo recognition software and physical verification by BLO to achieve this objective.
Provisions of Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021
The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill 2021 incorporates various electoral reforms which have been discussed for a long time.
Registration in the electoral roll is done based on an application by a person who is eligible to be registered as a voter.
The new applicant may voluntarily provide Aadhaar number along with the application for the purpose of identity.
As per the provisions, no new application will be rejected because Aadhaar number has not been provided.
Aadhaar linking with electoral roll will solve the problem of multiple enrolments of the same person at different places.
Amendment to Section 14 of the RP Act will allow to have four 'qualifying' dates for eligible people to register as voters.
As of now, January 1 of every year is the sole qualifying date. Those who turn 18 on or before January 1 can register as voters.
Those turning 18 after that have to wait for one whole year to register as voters as per the present system.
As per new provisions, January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1 in a calendar year will be the qualifying dates.
Amendment to Section 20 of the RP Act, 1950 and Section 60 of the RP Act, 1951 will make elections gender neutral for service voters.
The amendment will also help replace the word 'wife' with the word 'spouse' making the statutes 'gender neutral'.
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