According to the government, the names of people who do not link their Aadhaar number with the election identity card will still be part of the voters list.
How it works
The exercise is voluntary.
Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said in Lok Sabha, “The Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021, allows electoral registration officers to require the existing or prospective elector to provide the Aadhaar number for the “purpose of establishing identity” on a “voluntary basis”.
The matter came up during a discussion on the linkage of Aadhaar with electoral rolls.
Voluntary move
Relating to this, the Election Commission has launched a programme to collect the Aadhaar number of existing and prospective electors on a voluntary basis from August 1 in all states and UTs.
Currently the decision to link Aadhaar with a voter ID is voluntary and requires consent from the elector for Aadhaar authentication in Form 6B which was recently introduced, he said.
He, however, clarified that this consent to share Aadhaar details cannot be withdrawn.
Whether the name of the voter whose voter ID is not linked with Aadhaar will not be struck off the voters’ list.
Explanation
As per his data more than 54 crore of the nearly 95 crore total voters have opted to link their Aadhaar details with the voter list.
Linking of Aadhaar is “process driven” and “no targets have been given” for linking Aadhaar with election photo identity card.
The Unique Identification Authority of India, under the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 has made it compulsory for the centralised storage of all Aadhaar numbers in a different repository known as ‘Aadhaar data vault’.
Actual uses
The Election Commission strictly follows the guidelines prescribed by UIDAI and “does not” store the Aadhaar numbers in its database.
It is, rather, used just for authentication purposes and EC does not retrieve any personal information from the UIDAI Aadhaar database, he said.
