AADHAR LINKAGE

AADHAR LINKAGE

CONTEXT:

The Union Government passed Election Law (amendment) Bill to link voter IDs with Aadhaar cards.

ABOUT ELECTION LAWS (AMENDMENT) BILL, 2021

• Salient Feature –
  • It provides for amendment of section 23 of the Representation of People’s Act, 1950, enabling the linking of electoral roll data with the Aadhaar ecosystem.
  • This aims to curb the menace of multiple enrollment of the same person in different places.
  • The language for registration of ‘wives of service voters’ will now be replaced by ‘spouse’.
  • The bill proposes four qualifying dates (the first day of the months – January, April, July and October) for updating the voting rolls to include those who have turned 18 as compared to only one date previously (1st January).

IMPACT OF AADHAR ON INCREASING EFFICIENCY IN WELFARE PROGRAMS

• For many welfare programs such as payment of MGNREGA payments, it was made mandatory to link worker’s Aadhar with MGNREGA job card and their bank accounts.
• Using the Aadhaar Payment Bridge System (APBS) government was able to save about 10% of the wages.
• The use of Aadhar card is claimed to have helped the government to ensure increased accountability and transparency.

CHALLENGES IN ACHIEVING THE TARGETS OF WELFARE SCHEME DUE TO AADHAR

• Delay in disbursing the payments – It has been observed that there have been persistent delays in disbursing the wages under MGNREGA due to incorrect details or technical errors.
• Inefficiency – The ground level bureaucrats face difficulties in increasing the Aadhar linkage due to intense pressure and high volume of data.
• Technical errors in APBS – The payments through ABPS is also being delays due to software mapping failure in the centralized National Payments Corporation of India, the clearing house for APBS. India, the clearing house for APBS. Workers and officials alike are clueless on resolving these payment failures
• Misdirection of Payments – It has also been reported that the payments of workers are misdirected as the Aadhar number of one person is linked incorrectly with that of the other person.
• Lack of grievance redressal – there is also lack of grievance redressal mechanism and facilitation centers to address the issues faced by the users.

CONCLUSION

Taking learnings from these previous instances of Aadhar failures, there should be certain measures which need to be taken by the government in order to improve the new initiative of linking electoral with Aadhar.

If the Aadhar linkage is shrouded in such opacity, inefficiency, unreliability and exclusion it may even result in hampering the electoral democracy of our country.

What is Aadhaar

Aadhaar number is a 12-digit random number issued by the UIDAI (“Authority”) to the residents of India after satisfying the verification process laid down by the Authority. Any individual, irrespective of age and gender, who is a resident of India, may voluntarily enrol to obtain Aadhaar number. Person willing to enrol has to provide minimal demographic and biometric information during the enrolment process which is totally free of cost. An individual needs to enrol for Aadhaar only once and after de-duplication only one Aadhaar shall be generated, as the uniqueness is achieved through the process of demographic and biometric de-duplication.

Aadhaar number is verifiable in an online, cost-effective way. It is unique and robust enough to eliminate duplicates and fake identities and may be used as a basis/primary identifier to roll out several Government welfare schemes and programmes for effective service delivery thereby promoting transparency and good governance. This is the only program of its kind globally, wherein a state-of-the-art digital and online Id is being provided free of cost at such a large scale to people, and has the potential to change the way service delivery functions in the country.

Aadhaar number is devoid of any intelligence and does not profile people based on caste, religion, income, health and geography. The Aadhaar number is a proof of identity, however, it does not confer any right of citizenship or domicile in respect of an Aadhaar number holder.