Recently, the Union Cabinet has passed a bill where thecitizens are asked to link their Aadhaar to their Voter card. Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said the legislationwill end bogus voting in the country and makethe electoral process more credible. India gets four turns to registerin a year, anybody who is 18 years and above can register themselves as avoter. All this to avoid duplication in electoral rolls and also facilitatingremote electoral voting.
WHY LINKING AADHAAR AND VOTER CARD?
Even though the linking of the Aadhaar card and the Votercard is kept on a “voluntary basis”, it focuses on narrowing the incidence ofthe duplicates in electoral votings, and also an endeavor to introduce remotevoting. By linking the cards the Commission is trying to collect data from theAadhaar card to narrow down the voter list by clearing it as “back-endexercise”.
IS IT MANDATORY TO LINK AADHAAR CARD TO VOTER CARD?
No, it is not compulsory. Youth can register who hasturned 18 or will turn before January 1 can register themselves as a voter.Another provision allows the youth to enroll themselves as a voter on fourdifferent dates every year.
Issues that are hard to meet the eye?
There are several discrepancies that have cropped previouslyin the year of 2019, and even stays in the same skeptical light.
● ISSUES WITH REGISTRATION Unawareness regarding theregistration procedure, and discrepancies that erupt due to error during theregistration. The similar scenario happened during the linking of Aadhaar cardswith the banks. Will the Election commission reach out to the voter who hasn'tlinked their cards? If so, how is it going to take place? Mass campaigns whichis the usual procedure taken by the Election Commission of India (ECI) may fallshort to pick out such voters. The only possible solution would be an extensionthrough an application where they can penetrate deeper into the remote or nicheareas of India.
● ISSUES WITH THE PRIVACY Linking or syncing of the Aadhaarcards and the Voter cards can lead to the notoriety of how much are we exposingourselves to the government? However, in accordance with the Supreme Court’sdirection EC would apparently adhere to “protecting the privacy of theindividual”. However, EC was asked by the Ministry to list out the safeguardmeasures in this process.
● ISSUES WITH GENDER NEUTRALITY The gender neutrality wasupheld in the entire procedure.Previously, an Army Officer’s wife was allowedto enroll as a service worker but the similar was not applicable for thehusband of a lady Army Officer. According to the Section 60, Representation ofthe People Act refers to “such wife being ordinarily residing with that person”for allowing enrolment as a service voter. The third reform will replace theword “wife” with “spouse”.
As of now five states how received the Cabinet approval toimplement the voting reforms before the assembly elections in five states earlynext year-
● Goa
● Punjab
● Uttarakhand
● Uttar Pradesh
● Manipur