The ruling BJP with some other political parties urged the Election Commission for a few days back to link Aadhaar number of voters with electoral rolls. The parties make this request to weed out duplicate names. The Election commission released the statement, “Political parties urged the Commission to link Aadhaar numbers with electors’ detail for better electoral roll management.”
As there are Assembly polls in four states later this year and the Lok Sabha polls due next year, so the parties urged to link Aadhaar detail with voter list. EC released the statement after an all-party meet convened by it. For this meeting, EC invited seven recognised national parties and 51 recognised state political parties. However, out of the total 58 parties, 41 attended the meeting of EC. And out of 41 parties, at least 25 percent parties which attended the meeting made this demand. This has been confirmed by two Election Commission functionaries.
As per the statement released by BJP the poll panel was told that immediate steps are required for maintaining voter list in alphabetical order, so that duplicate names can be deleted. BJP said, “Initiative could be taken for making a pan India initiative. This could be successfully implemented if the voter registration is linked to Aadhar.”
The Supreme Court had stopped the process initiated by Election Commission to link the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) (Aadhaar) number with voters’ list to check multiple entries in electoral rolls in August, 2015.
Following the order of Supreme Court, Election Commission then asked its chief electoral officers in all states and Union Territories for suspending the immediate effect till further orders and all activities to collect and feed Aadhaar numbers of voters as part of its National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP).
An Apex court in its judgement also made it clear that Aadhaar card will be optional for availing various welfare schemes of the govt. and no personal information of the holders of Aadhaar cards shall be shared by any authority or government. The judgement was made in August, 2015. The judgement reads as, “The UIDAI (Universal Identification Authority of India)/Aadhar will not be used for any other purposes except PDS, kerosene and LPG distribution system.”
Not only this, but also the parties expressed concern over paid news. They suggested to make it an electoral offence to curb this menace. The Election Commission had proposed to make paid news an electoral offence for providing a strong deterrent in a bid to stamp out the danger. The proposal of making paid news an electoral offence is pending with the Law Ministry since 2012. It is to provide a level-playing field for parties in elections.
The Election Commission was also urged by political parties that on the lines of Doordarshan and All India Radio (AIR), free airtime to political parties should be provided on private media for electoral campaigns. Now it is to see whether the voter list will be linked to Aadhaar detail or not!