Concerns over linking Aadhaar with voter ID

Subject : Polity

Section: Msc

Concept :

Close to 60% of Indian voters have currently linked their Aadhaar to their name on the electoral rolls.
The linking exercise has achieved coverage of over 90% in States like Tripura and is lagging behind in states like Gujarat and Delhi as only 30% of the electorate has provided their Aadhaar to election officials.
The linking of Aadhaar with voter IDs is being carried out by filling Form 6B, which is provided by election officials and is a result of the Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021 that has allowed the linking.
While the Election Commission of India (ECI) has maintained that the linking is optional, Form 6B requires voters to declare that they do not have an Aadhaar to avoid doing so.
Before the passage of the Election Laws (Amendment) Act, the Supreme Court had restricted the mandatory use of Aadhaar to welfare schemes and PAN linking.
Several activists have raised concerns about disenfranchisement, coercion and privacy as a result of this linking exercise.
There have been concerns over privacy issues as Aadhaar linking may enable political parties to micro-target voters.
Activists from the NGO Swechha have said that documents they had obtained through a Right to Information (RTI) request revealed that over 20 lakh voters were deleted from the rolls in Telangana following an Aadhaar-linking exercise.

Linking of Aadhaar with Voter ID

The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill 2021 was passed in Parliament enabling the linking of electoral roll data with the Aadhaar ecosystem
The bill amended certain provisions of the Representation of Peoples Act, 1950 and the Representation of Peoples Act,1951.
Section 23(4) was inserted in the Representation of the People Act, 1950.
It authorises the electoral registration officer to ask citizens already enrolled to furnish their Aadhaar numbers. This is done in order to curb the problem of multiple enrolment of the same person in different places.
To reflect this amendment, in June 2022, the government notified changes to the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.
Use of discretionary language throughout the amendments has been accompanied by assurances by both the government and the EC that linkage of the Aadhaar with Voter ID is optional.
Ambiguities in Form 6B issued under the new Rule 26B have negated the element of choice that has been incorporated in the amendments.

Concerns over linkage

In the Puttaswamy judgement, the Supreme Court of India explored whether the mandatory linking of Aadhaar with bank accounts was constitutional or not.
The Court in case of mandatory linking of Aadhaar with bank accounts observed that depriving a person of their right to property for non-linkage fell foul of the test of proportionality.
Even though other means of verification and authentication are allowed,if the person does not hold an Aadhaar in case of voter verification, given the wide coverage of Aadhaar, the current design would in effect mandate Aadhaar linkage.
In this context, it needs to be considered whether requiring an Aadhaar holder to mandatorily provide Aadhaar for authentication or verification would not be considered violative of their informational autonomy (right to privacy) which would allow them to decide which official document they want to use for verification and authentication.
The Supreme Court in the Lal Babu Hussein case,1995, had held that the Right to vote cannot be disallowed by insisting only on four proofs of identity — voters can rely on any other proof of identity and obtain the right to vote.