Notification allowing linking Aadhaar with electoral roll data issued, says Kiren Rijiju

New Delhi: The government on Friday issued rules allowing linking of electoral roll data with Aadhaar, making electoral law gender neutral for service voters and enabling young citizens register as voters four times a year instead of the present one.

Four notifications were issued under the Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021 passed by Parliament late last year to bring in the rules.

Law Minister Kiren Rijiju took to Twitter to announce that four notifications in this regard have been issued in consultation with the Election Commission.

The government has all along maintained that sharing of Aadhaar details will be voluntary.

The Election Laws (Amendment) Act seeks to allow electoral registration officers to seek Aadhaar number of people who want to register as voters "for the purpose of establishing the identity".

It also seeks to allow the electoral registration officers to ask for Aadhaar numbers from "persons already included in the electoral roll for the purposes of authentication of entries in the electoral roll, and to identify registration of the name of the same person in the electoral roll of more than one constituency or more than once in the same constituency".

At the same time, the bill as passed by Parliament makes it clear that "no application for inclusion of name in the electoral roll shall be denied and no entries in the electoral roll shall be deleted for the inability of an individual to furnish or intimate Aadhaar number due to such sufficient cause as may be prescribed". Rijiju shared a chart to say that the notifications will enable "linking of electoral roll data with the Aadhaar ecosystem to curb the menace of multiple enrolment of the same person in different places".