Election Commission: 54.32 cr Aadhaar collected, none linked with Voter ID yet

On June 17, the Law Ministry notified April 1, 2023 as the last date that electors “may” submit their Aadhaar numbers for linking with Voter IDs by filling a new form — Form 6-B.

Last week, senior EC officials said about half of the total 95 crore registered electors had linked their Aadhaar with Voter IDs voluntarily.

Asked how many Aadhaar numbers had been linked with Voter IDs, the EC, in the RTI reply, said: “It is informed that the process of linking of Electoral Roll/EPIC database with Aadhaar database has not been started so far… It is also informed that the total number of Form-6B received from existing electors from 01.08.2022 to till date i.e 12.12.2022 is 54,32,84,760.”

In response to a question on how many entries had been deleted or instances of duplicate or fraud been detected, the EC replied: “As explained above that no Aadhaar linking has been started, no any such entries have been identified on the basis of Aadhaar linking so far.”

The RTI reply also pointed out that EC’s instructions to state chief electoral officers on July 4 was to carry out the “programme for collection of Aadhaar number of existing electors on voluntary basis in Form-6B” from August 1.

An EC spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on why the linking had not started yet, if it would begin after April 1, 2023, and how the data collected so far was being stored by the EC.

Meanwhile, while replying to a question by MPs Ritesh Pandey, Pradyut Bordoloi and Syed Imtiaz Jaleel in Lok Sabha Friday, Law Minister Kiren Rijiju clarified that no voter would be struck off the rolls for not linking the Aadhaar and Voter IDs.

The Minister’s written reply stated that the Aadhaar numbers were stored in a repository known as ‘Aadhaar Data Vault’ based on the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)’s regulations under the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016.

“The ECI strictly follows the guidelines prescribed by UIDAI and does not store the Aadhaar numbers in its database. The Aadhaar number is used only for authentication purposes and ECI does not retrieve any personal information from the UIDAI Aadhaar database,” the Minister’s reply stated.

The EC had earlier started a programme to collect Aadhaar numbers in March 2015, but it was suspended in August that year after the Supreme Court ruled that citizens who did not produce their Aadhaar could not be deprived of benefits that were otherwise due to them.