To ensure fair and transparent elections in the country, the Election Commission has now decided to strictly curb irregularities in the voter list. To prevent fake voters and duplicate entries, the Commission is reconsidering the plan to link Voter ID (EPIC) with Aadhaar.
This step will make it possible to identify those who are registered more than once at different places. The Commission has seriously considered this issue and has called an important meeting today, which will be attended by the Union Home Secretary, Secretary of the Legislative Department and CEO of UIDAI.
If this proposal is implemented, the election process will be more transparent in future, which will reduce the possibility of any kind of rigging and fraud in the voter list.
Future decision will be related to important meeting
An important meeting of the Election Commission is going to be held on March 18 regarding this issue, in which the Union Home Secretary, Secretary of the Legislative Department and the CEO of UIDAI will participate. In this meeting, all the legal and technical aspects related to voter ID and Aadhaar linking will be discussed. This meeting has become even more important especially amid the growing concerns about duplicate entries of voter ID in West Bengal.
Fake voters will be banned
According to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, this initiative will make it easier to identify fake voters and remove them from the list. Many political parties, such as Trinamool Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT), NCP (SCP) and BJD, had raised the issue of voters having the same EPIC number. The commission admitted that in some states the same voter ID number was issued twice due to technical reasons, but this cannot be termed as fraud. Now strict steps are being taken to find a permanent solution to this issue.
Will it be mandatory to link Voter ID with Aadhaar?
In 2023, on a PIL in the Supreme Court, the Election Commission had said that providing Aadhaar number is not mandatory, it is optional. However, now the Commission is considering legal and technical solutions, which can make this process mandatory, just like linking Aadhaar and PAN card was made mandatory.
An important part of the Election Commission’s reform plans
The Election Commission has long been supporting Aadhaar seeding (Voter ID-Aadhaar Linking). In 2017, the Commission also filed an application in the Supreme Court seeking permission to link Aadhaar with Voter ID. The Commission believes that this will make the voter list more accurate and transparent. Apart from this, this initiative will also be helpful in other important efforts of electoral reforms such as advance voting system, remote voting for domestic migrants and strengthening the electoral process.
Duplicate voters will be removed in three months
The Commission has also announced that it will complete the process of removing duplicate voter entries in the next three months. For this, District Election Officers in more than 800 districts have been instructed to organize more than 5000 meetings with local political parties. The feedback received from these meetings will be submitted to the Commission by March 31.
Now it remains to be seen what decision is taken in this meeting on March 18 and whether linking Voter ID and Aadhaar will soon become mandatory in India.
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