More than 54 crore voters out of a total of nearly 95 crore have opted to link their Aadhaar details with the electoral rolls, an exercise the government and the Election Commission (EC) believe would weed out duplicate entries from the voters' list. Law Minister Kiren Rijiju informed Parliament on Thursday that according to the information made available by the EC, the total number of Form 6B submitted as on December 12 stood at 54,32,84,760. Using the newly-introduced Form 6B, the existing voters may share their Aadhaar numbers with the poll authorities. "The process of Aadhaar linking with the Elector Photo Identity Card (EPIC) has begun and the concerned electors will be notified authentication result after obtaining the same from Unique Identification Authority of India," Rijiju said in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha. The Representation of the People Act was amended in December last year to pave the way for voluntary linkage of Aadhaar and voter list details. Subsequently, the Union law ministry issued rules earlier this year to bring into force the changes carried out in the electoral law. "In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (5) of section 23 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 (43 of 1950), the central government hereby notifies the 1st April, 2023 as the date on or before which every person whose name is included in the electoral roll may intimate his Aadhaar number in accordance with the said section," read the law ministry notification issued a few months ago. The new form was introduced with effect from August 1 "for collecting Aadhaar numbers". In July, the EC had warned of "severe" disciplinary action against electoral registration officers for any leakages of the physical forms filled by the electors to share their Aadhaar details.
