Why is the government linking the Voter-IDs with Aadhar?

Recently, the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 was passed in the Parliament which seeks to link electoral roll data and voter ID cards with the Aadhaar ecosystem.

Historically, the attempts to link the two has not been encouraging. In 2018, an attempt to link Aadhaar to voter ID led a large number of voters in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to be deleted from the rolls.

But We should not make assumptions on this just on the basis of its past performance. Let's look at the advantages and disadvantages of the linking process

Advantages

The new law will make the language used in the Voter registration process more gender-neutral, changing the word "wife" to "spouse". These small steps can lead India to be a more open country in terms of gender neutrality.

This will also stop bogus voting and fraudulent voters who, before this, used to cast votes in multiple constituencies/states because they migrated to different areas on a regular basis.

This will also initiate a long-overdue process of voting in India i.e. Remote voting, which will help the migrant workers and save their time and money as they will not have to travel to far off locations in their home towns just to cast their votes. This in turn can lead to an increase in voter turnouts, as those who earlier didn't cast the vote due to the very same reason, will be able to able to cast it now.

Disadvantages

What happens with Aadhar is that there is no verification of the data that is provided in the card by the cardholder. Due to this, the cardholder is paramount and whatever he says is the truth. Now, what is to stop the cardholder from falsely stating his credentials in the Aadhar card which alters the electoral rolls of the states.

Another problem is that since the data about each and everyone's caste, religion, locality etc. will be available with the Election Commission to India, one can only imagine the possibility of the extent voter-profiling that is going to be done by the political party in power.

This also raises privacy concerns among people. The Supreme Court, which prohibited the use of Aadhar for any purpose other than the Public Distribution Scheme, cooking oil and LPG distribution scheme, may intervene in this issue if the government tries to make the process mandatory for everyone.

Judging by the efficiencies of the Aadhar-linking process in 2015 in the states of Telangana and Andhra, there was no door-to-door verification done before deleting the names from the electoral rolls. What this led to was approximately 30 lakh voters from the voter base, leaving them clueless on the voting day. If this is implemented on the national level, this will prove to be a big problem because there is no redressal mechanism for the same and the law does not provide for a right to a hearing on this issue.

Similar cases were seen in the linking of Aadhar with the Ration cards, when in 2016 in Jarkhand, only 12% of the deletions that took place due to the linking of the 2 cards were legitimate deletions, while the rest 88% were left stranded with no ration cards and no possible way to procure the foodgrains.

While the law says that the linkage is voluntary, one cannot be assured of the extent of voluntariness associated with this due to the past experiences of many schemes, wherein by law, the linkage is voluntary but in practice is mandatory.

Lastly, this change is shifting the burden of proof from the government, who used to ask for the credentials, to the citizens, who will not be required to present the credentials. The difference between the 2 words - ask and present - can cause serious implications on the electoral rolls.

Conclusion and Way forward

Ensuring the proper implementation of the Personal Data Protection law by the government is essential to safeguard the privacy issues being raised.

What lacked in this judgement and what should have been done is that it should 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.

There are indeed issues of voters being registered in more than one constituency or the enrollment of non-citizens, but these can be addressed by other identification processes. In fact, the Aadhaar database may even be irrelevant to verifying voter identity because it is an identifier of residents and not citizens.

The Government must invite public opinion and allow deeper parliamentary scrutiny before implementing any new provisions. It is of utmost importance in a Parliamentary democracy like India that not just the ordinary citizens but also the elected representatives are not being deprived of their rights and opportunities.

On one side, this decision can prove to be a good step towards helping migrant voters, deletion of bogus voters, making the laws more gender-neutral among others. While the other side shows how this can lead to voter profiling, privacy concerns, illegitimate deletions, questions on the efficiencies of the process among others. What actual implications this may have and how the government solves those implications, only time can tell. Till then, you are the judge.