New Delhi: Amid the demand by the Opposition to refer it to a standing committee, the ‘Election Laws (Amendment) bill 2021’ has been passed by the Lok Sabha to link electoral roll data with the Aadhar and other poll reforms, after a brief debate. While the Opposition is criticising the Government’s move to link Aadhar with voter ID, sources said that it would solve the problem of multiple enrolments of the same person at different locations.
The government sources added that the bill includes multiple electoral reforms, and shared a 2018 statement of the Election Commission that was issued after a meeting of all recognised national and regional parties on various electoral reforms. “Political parties urged the commission to link Aadhar numbers with electors’ detail for better electoral roll management,” the statement read.
Registration in the electoral roll is done based on an application by a person who is eligible to be registered as a voter and this bill has a provision whereby the new applicant may voluntarily provide the Aadhar number along with the application for the purpose of identity, government sources said.
No application will be rejected on the grounds that the Aadhar number has not been provided, the sources added. Linking electoral roll with Aadhar will solve one of the major problems in electoral database management. The possibility of electors whose names appear in more than one electoral roll or at times more than once in the same electoral roll can be removed, the sources said.
Apart from linking electoral roll to Aadhar, the bill also makes the statutes gender neutral by updating the term ‘wife’ with ‘spouse’ to allow husbands of service voters to cast their vote from the place of their wives posting. It also provides four qualifying dates, namely, “January 1”, “April 1”, “July 1” and “October 1”, instead of a single qualifying date as “January 1”.