Yesterday the central cabinet cleared the bill on electoral reforms, allowing voluntary Aadhar-Voter ID linking.
In August 2019, the Election Commission (EC) proposed amendments including linking of the ID card with Aadhaar number which will curb multiple enrollments of the same individual at different places. This has been a long-pending proposal of the Election Commission. In 2015, when the EC launched the National Electoral Law Purification and Authentication Programme to link the Aadhaar number with the Voter ID number, the programme was stalled after the Supreme Court ordered that the use of Aadhaar would be optional for availing of welfare schemes
According to reports, the law ministry started working on the proposal in 2020. In August this year, the law minister informed Parliament that the govt was considering the EC’s proposal. “After consulting various stakeholders, the Commission submitted its 244th and 255th Reports encompassing various aspects of electoral reforms which, inter alia, include disqualification from contesting election on framing of charges, regulation of election finance and opinion polls, ban on paid news etc,” the minister said in a written reply.
As per reports, another proposal in the reforms will allow the Election Commission to take over any premise for the conduct of elections overruling objections to taking over schools as polling booths.
These reforms will allow EC to seed the Aadhar number with electorol rolls on a voluntary basis.
According to the bill cleared by the Cabinet, the electoral law will be made “gender-neutral” for service voters. Another provision of the bill will allow new voters to enroll on four different dates every year. As of now, those turning 18 on or before January 1 of every year are only allowed to register as voters.
An army man’s wife is entitled to be enrolled as a service voter, but a woman army officer’s husband is not, according to the existing provisions. The EC had asked the law ministry to replace the term ‘wife’ with ‘spouse’ in the provision in the Representation of the People Act related to service voters.
Although it is not mandatory to link Aadhar and Voter ID card, if someone wants to link the same, here is the procedure
- Through National Voter Service portal :
- Visit https://voterportal.eci.gov.in/
- Login using mobile number/email ID/Voter ID Number and enter password
- Enter state, district and personal details such as name, date of birth and father’s name.
- After filling details click on ‘Search’ button. If the details entered by you matches the govt database, then the details will appear on screen.
- Click on ‘Feed Aadhar No’ option that will be visible on the left side of the screen.
- A pop up page will appear where you will have to fill in your name as mentioned in the Aadhar card, Aadhar number, voter ID number, registered mobile number and/or registered e mail address.
- After entering all details correctly, press ‘Submit’ button.
- A message will appear on screen saying that your application has been registered successfully.
- Through SMS : you can link your Aadhar card with voter IB, by sending SMS to 166 OR 51969 in the following format
<Voter ID number><Aadhar number>
- Through Phone: This can be done by calling the call centres set up for
this purpose. You need to dial 1950 on weekdays between 10 am and 5 pm and share your voter ID number and Aadhar card information to link the two.
You can check status of your application by vising NVSP website-
https://voterportal.eci.gov.in/ and enter the information as stated in the section.
In my opinion, linking Aadhar and Voter ID card can stop so many electoral malpractices, but on the breaching of one’s privacy, this was put on hold by Supreme Court.
Waiting for your views on this blog.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
16th December 2021