A new law pushed through Lok Sabha yesterday allows election officers to ask for your Aadhaar card when you register to vote. Whether you choose to do so is still voluntary, but civil rights activists and opposition leaders are raising the alarm—claiming it is the first step toward a serious loss of voting rights and privacy.
Here’s how it links Aadhaar to your voter registration:
Point to note: You can already link your Aadhaar to your Voter ID on the Election Commission website.
There are two key justifications offered:
One: It makes voting rights portable—especially for Indians living outside the country and migrant workers. In theory, linking the two databases will allow the Election Commission to track migrant workers—and enable them to vote from where they work. A change in residence updated on their Aadhaar Card will directly update the electoral database as well.
Two: It will eliminate duplicate Voter ID cards—which allow people to vote from multiple places—and hence voter fraud. Aadhaar requires biometric verification which cannot be replicated.
Here are all the objections raised by civil rights activists and opposition leaders:
Proof of citizenship? As some leaders point out, “Aadhaar was meant to be proof of residence, not proof of citizenship. If you are asking for an Aadhaar card from the voter, all you get is a document that reflects residence.” FYI: even OCI holders can get Aadhaar cards if they wish—since all you have to do is establish residency not citizenship.
Not really voluntary: The text of the law says:
“[N]o application for inclusion of name in the electoral roll shall be denied and no entries in the electoral roll shall be deleted for inability of an individual to furnish or intimate Aadhaar number due to such sufficient cause as may be prescribed.” (emphasis added)
This implies that a person has to offer a good reason for not handing over their Aadhaar numbers. Civil rights groups point out:
“What will be this sufficient cause will be determined by future regulations? However, it is not clearly spelt out on the ingredients of what will be the grounds for such sufficient cause. Hence, it is not voluntary.”
Others predict that the government will inevitably impose penalties on voters who do not give their Aadhaar—because it does not specify the right to refuse. Also: The government has not specified what alternative IDs it will accept—or may make the procedure for accepting such IDs far more tedious.
In effect: Aadhaar may become ‘voluntary’ only in theory—turning it into a required proof of citizenship.
Point to note: As The Wire notes, the Election Commission has a terrible record on voter consent. Back in 2015, it linked 300 million Voter IDs to Aadhaar records in three months—without the knowledge of voters—using a government database tool. This was part of an ambitious National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Program (NERPAP)—which was suspended when the Supreme Court stepped in to strictly limit the uses of Aadhaar.
Mass disenfranchisement: The Aadhaar has a sketchy record as a form of identification—and has often resulted in poor people losing access to basic benefits. For example, the Jharkhand government made linking of Aadhaar to ration cards mandatory—and then canceled 11.6 lakh cards as fake. A key study later found that 90% of these canceled ration cards were, in fact, valid. The CEO of UIDAI—which issues the Aadhaar cards—admitted a 12% verification failure rate. That adds up to a lot of people being struck off the voter rolls.
Example of Telangana/AP: Remember the Election Commission’s NERPAP campaign using Aadhaar? It resulted in the deletion of 27-30 lakh voter records during the 2018 state elections in Telangana. That’s 10% of the voter base in the state. And in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, another 20 lakh voters were struck off the record. Point to note: Voters were not given the chance to challenge the deletion as required by the law.
Privacy, what privacy? Linking an Aadhaar card to the person’s voter record offers dangerous access to their personal information. For example, in Telangana, an IT company was found in possession of the Aadhaar and Voter ID data of 78.2 million Indians from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana (all thanks to that NERPAP project). Also this: The company had been hired by the Telugu Desam Party to develop an app.
Also this: In the wrong hands, this data could be used to target specific groups, and strip them of the right to vote, as civil rights activists warn:
“There have been examples of targeted surveillance using Aadhaar information and demographic data. In Andhra Pradesh, 5.167 million families’ locations could be tracked on a website run by the state government, using religion and caste as search criteria.”
The bottomline: The right to vote is the very definition of a democracy. Anything that endangers that right cannot be just pushed through Parliament thanks to a brute majority of any one party. The big question, therefore, is whether the Supreme Court will intervene—and whether it will rule the law to be a violation of its own 2018 judgement.
The Telegraph rounds up the Opposition’s criticism of the law. Scroll reports on the inclusion of the key phrase of “sufficient cause”—and offers a more detailed explainer on the law. The Data Governance Network has a good backgrounder on arguments against the law. The Wire looks at why the EC is big on linking Aadhaar to Voter IDs. Also in The Wire: A very good investigation of the EC’s NERPAP project. Indian Express has a good explainer on the Supreme Court’s Aadhaar judgement in 2018—which holds the key to the future of this law.
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