Explained: All you need to know about the Bill seeking to link Aadhaar with electoral rolls

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The Lok Sabha on December 20 passed the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, which seeks to link electoral rolls with Aadhaar numbers. The Bill was introduced in the Lower House by Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju amidst protests by the Opposition leaders during the ongoing Winter Session of Parliament.

The Bill seeks to amend the Representation of the People Act to allow Aadhaar numbers to be used for registration of voters to establish their identity. However, people who cannot furnish their Aadhaar numbers will be allowed to present other documents as proof of identity, according to the provisions in the Bill.

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The Bill also proposes to replace the word 'wife' with 'spouse' to make elections gender-neutral for service (armed forces) voters.

The proposed law, which has been introduced ahead of assembly polls in five states early next year, has faced objections from Opposition leaders and civil society activists, who say it violates fundamental rights by harming the privacy of citizens.

READ: National interest will override personal interest : PP Chaudhary, head of JPC on Data Protection Bill

Opposition members from the Congress, TMC and the AIMIM have objected to provisions in the Bill, arguing that they were beyond Parliament’s legislative competence and would be detrimental to democracy.

Rijiju responded to the criticism in Lok Sabha on December 20 by saying that the Opposition has misunderstood the Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Bill, noting that it is aimed at curtailing the menace of bogus voters.

Here is a primer on the Bill and why it is being opposed:

What is the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021?

On December 15, the Union Cabinet cleared the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, seeking electoral reforms, including one to link electoral rolls with Aadhaar on a voluntary basis, according to a PTI report.

Among other provisions, the Bill allows election officials to ask for the Aadhaar numbers of people seeking registration as voters, to establish their identity.  People who cannot furnish their Aadhaar numbers will be allowed to present other documents to establish their identity, according to the provisions of the Bill.

Also read:  Winter Session of Parliament | Joint committee report on Data Protection Bill tabled in Rajya Sabha

In the statement of objects and reasons of the draft Bill, the government has said that electoral reform is an “ongoing and continuous” process.

The Centre, it said, has been receiving proposals for electoral reforms from various quarters, including the Election Commission, from time to time. Based on these submissions, it proposed to amend the provisions of the RP Act, 1950 and RP Act, 1951, the statement of objects and reasons said.

Linking Aadhaar with voter IDs

The Bill seeks to amend Section 23 of the RP Act, 1950, to allow linking of electoral roll data with the Aadhaar ecosystem to “curb the menace of multiple enrolment of the same person in different places”.

The Election Commission of India has been pressing the Centre to amend provisions of the Representation of the People Act, allowing it to seek the Aadhaar numbers of those applying to be voters and those who are already part of the electoral rolls.

Also, read: UIDAI working with World Bank, UN to take Aadhaar tech overseas

In August 2019, the Election Commission asked the Centre to give it statutory backing to collect Aadhaar numbers of new applicants and existing voters to check multiple entries in the electoral rolls.

On March 18, 2020, the then Union Minister for Law and Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad informed the Lok Sabha that a proposal to amend the Representation of the People Act, 1951 to enable deduplication of electoral data using the Aadhaar system had been received from the Election Commission.

A year later, in a written reply to the Lok Sabha in March 2021, Prasad said the Centre was considering a proposal to link electoral rolls with the “Aadhaar ecosystem” to “curb the menace of multiple enrolment of the same person at different places”.

In 2015, the Supreme Court, in an interim order on a batch of pleas challenging the Aadhaar framework, had directed that Aadhaar only be used to identify beneficiaries of state-sponsored schemes. In its final ruling in 2018, the top court had said the government would require legislative backing through a specific law to tap into the Aadhaar ecosystem.

Gender-neutral for service voters and other provisions

The proposed amendments to Section 20 of the RP Act, 1950 and Section 60 of the RP Act, 1951 also seek to make elections gender-neutral for service voters. The Bill proposes to substitute the word 'wife' with the word 'spouse', making the statute gender neutral. Currently, the wife of a member of the armed forces can be enrolled as  a service voter. However, a woman officer’s husband is not entitled to this facility. That will end when ‘wife’ is replaced by ‘spouse’ in the legislation.

Similarly, clause b of Section 14 of the RP Act, 1950 will allow four “qualifying” dates for eligible people to register as voters. Under the existing provisions, January 1 of every year is the qualifying date. Hence, people who turn 18 on or before January 1 can register as voters and those turning 18 after that have to wait for a year to register as voters. Now, as proposed in the Bill, January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1 in a calendar year will be qualifying dates for the revision of electoral rolls.

The Opposition

The proposal to link the electoral rolls to Aadhaar has faced objections from many Opposition leaders and civil society activists. They argue that the proposed amendments violate the Supreme Court judgement upholding privacy as a fundamental right as well as the Aadhaar verdict, which limited the use of Aadhaar authentication to welfare programmes and PAN-linking related to incomes.

Submitted notice to oppose Election Laws (Amendment), Bill 2021 which proposes to link AADHAAR to electoral roll enrolment. pic.twitter.com/dSEq7jhQKA

— Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) December 20, 2021

"The Bill is outside the legislative competence of the House as  it violates the limits on legislation set by the Supreme Court in its judgement (Puttaswami v. Union of India). The linking of voter IDs and Aadhaar violates the fundamental right to privacy as defined by Hon"ble SC in the judgement,” Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi said in a notice opposing the Bill. Owaisi also demanded a division on vote of introduction, but the Chairman did not allow.

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said that through the Bill, the government was potentially giving the vote to non-citizens. Many activists have called the provisions in the Bill a “grave threat” to electoral democracy.

“It is important to note that the legislative text of the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 has not been put to public consultation. The objections to the proposal, given the grave threats to electoral democracy, should be part of any official policy formation process,” said Apar of the Internet Freedom Foundation, a non-profit that works for online freedom, privacy and innovation.

A recent note by independent public policy think tank IDFC Institute, titled ‘Integrating Aadhaar and Voter ID Data: Promises and Dangers’, says that the proposal fails to specify the extent of data sharing between the two databases, the methods through which consent will be obtained, and whether consent to link the databases can be revoked.