Exclusive: Election Commission proposal: Voters who decline to give Aadhaar need to appear, explain why

An ERO, typically a civil service/revenue officer, is empowered by Section 13B of the R P Act 1950 to prepare, update and revise electoral rolls (more commonly known as the “voters’ list”) for Assembly constituencies. EROs are designated by the Election Commission in consultation with State Governments.

Currently, the EC, up to 2023, had collected Aadhaar details of over 66 crore voters, who had “voluntarily” offered this information. But the two databases for these 66 crore voters haven’t been linked. In other words, so far, Aadhaar hasn’t been used to weed out duplicate entries or enable clean-up of electoral rolls.

There are a total estimated 98 crore registered voters.

The proposal that every voter who doesn’t provide her 12-digit unique identity number needs to give an explanation in person before an ERO is understood to have been discussed at a high-level meeting last week between senior officers of the EC and representatives from the Home Ministry, Law Ministry, IT Ministry, and UIDAI, and is likely to be part of the amended Form 6B.

With this change, the EC hopes that sharing Aadhaar number will be categorically clarified as a “voluntary” exercise and it will, consequently, fulfil its commitment before the Supreme Court (in G Niranjan Vs Election Commission of India) in September 2023.

At that time, the poll watchdog had informed the apex court that it was looking into issuing “appropriate clarificatory changes in the forms introduced for that purpose” to ensure that voters understand the exercise is voluntary.

Currently, Form 6B, which was introduced to collect Aadhaar numbers of voters, lacks options for electors to abstain from providing Aadhaar, offering only two choices: either provide Aadhaar or declare, “I am not able to furnish my Aadhaar because I don’t have Aadhaar number.”

The latter, the petitioners in G Niranjan Vs Election Commission of India case had said, basically forced voters to give a false undertaking when they actually don’t wish to volunteer that information.

According to the proposal discussed in the March 18 meeting, Form 6B will be tweaked to remove the latter declaration (“I am not able to furnish my Aadhaar because I don’t have Aadhaar number”). It will now have just one declaration that the voter is providing an alternative document (out of the predetermined list of documents mentioned in Form 6B) and will appear before ERO on a given date to explain why she is not sharing Aadhaar details.

This change will have to be notified by the Law Ministry by way of the gazette notification only after EC sends a formal proposal to the Union government on the same. This amendment is likely to happen before the next set of Assembly elections in Bihar.

The meeting held on March 18 was attended by Home Secretary Govind Mohan; MEiTY secretary S Krishnan; Legislative Department Secretary Rajiv Mani and UIDAI CEO Bhuvnesh Kumar and was held against the backdrop of the Opposition INDIA bloc parties alleging irregularities in electoral rolls in different parts of the country.