The Election Commission (EC) is holding a meeting with the top officials of the Union Home Ministry, Law Ministry and Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) next week to discuss the issue of linking of the Aadhaar numbers with the voter identity cards, EC sources said Saturday. Following an amendment to the Representation of the People Act, 1951 in 2021 enabling the linking of the Aadhaar numbers with the Electors Photo Identity Cards (EPICs), the EC began collecting the Aadhaar numbers from electors on a voluntary basis in 2022. However, the EC has not used the Aadhaar numbers in its revisions of the electoral rolls so far. The exercise was meant to aid the Commission in detecting duplicate registration of voters in order to clean up the electoral rolls. The Aadhaar-EPIC linking has not been made mandatory for voters. The EC, comprising Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, is set to meet Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan, Legislative Department Secretary Rajiv Mani and UIDAI CEO Bhuvnesh Kumar on March 18 to discuss the seeding of the Aadhaar numbers in the voter IDs. The meeting comes against the backdrop of the Opposition INDIA bloc parties making allegations of irregularities in electoral rolls in different parts of the country. The Trinamool Congress (TMC) has raked up the issue of electors in West Bengal and other states having the same EPIC numbers. The EPIC row was flagged by TMC chief and Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at a recent conclave of her party in Kolkata, where she accused the BJP of allegedly manipulating the voter lists in collusion with the EC. It led the EC to acknowledge that some state Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) had used the wrong alphanumeric series when issuing the EPIC numbers. The Commission also said that having identical EPIC numbers do not imply fake voters as other details such as demographic information, Assembly constituency and polling booth are different. The poll body has also announced that it would issue new EPIC numbers to electors with duplicate numbers within three months. Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi also raised the issue of alleged manipulation of voter lists in the House earlier this week, demanding a discussion over it. "Such questions have been raised by the Opposition in one voice in every state, including Maharashtra," he said. EC sources said the Aadhaar numbers would help in the process of field enquiries to check whether an elector is genuine or has a duplicate registration. The TMC however called the high-level meeting convened by the EC a "face-saving measure". TMC Rajya Sabha MP Sagarika Ghosh said on X: “It has taken a sustained campaign by (TMC) and our opposition allies on duplicate EPIC cards for the (EC) to belatedly wake up to its constitutional duty to ensure the sanctity of electoral rolls. The EC has so far issued 3 press releases, vowed to fix duplicate EPIC cards, and will now meet UIDAI to link EPIC with Aadhaar. Remember without verified electoral rolls, there can be no free and fair elections!” In a reply in Parliament last February, the Law Ministry had said: “The linking of Aadhaar with (EPIC) has not yet started. The Election Commission has informed that it is voluntary to submit Aadhaar number with Voter ID and consent is obtained from the electors for Aadhaar in Form 6B. Currently, there is no provision regarding deletion of Aadhaar details if a voter takes back his consent.” As of January this year, the country had over 99 crore registered electors. The EC had submitted to the Supreme Court in 2023 that 66.23 crore electors’ Aadhaar numbers had been collected so far, as per the court’s order in September 2023. The court was hearing a challenge to the EC’s Form 6B, which does not give the elector an option of not providing the Aadhaar number, as it only has two options – either give the Aadhaar or declare that you don’t have one. EC sources said the process of de-duplication would be carried out soon using an update to the Commission's existing software. The duplicate EPIC cards would be changed with new ones for those electors in states not going to polls. For instance, the electors in Bengal and Tamil Nadu, where the Assembly elections are due next year, would not be given new numbers. The electors in other states with the same numbers as those in poll-going states would be issued new EPIC cards. Sources also said that the EC had been issuing instructions to the CEOs regularly for cleaning up the rolls. In a letter to the CEOs in August 2024, the EC had said: “The Commission has directed to take all out efforts to ensure 100% removal of discrepancies in EPICs during the current round of pre-revision activities.”
