Aadhaar-Linked Voter IDs Among New Electoral Reforms As Union Cabinet Clears Bill

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a bill on electoral reforms, allowing linking of Aadhaar to voter ID cards – one of the key proposals pushed by the Election Commission of India (ECI). The bill will also allow those exercising their franchise for the first time to get as many as four turns to register in a year. At present, those turning 18 on or before January 1 of every year are only allowed to register as voters once. This apart, the electoral law will be made gender-neutral for service voters.

The (ECI) had earlier written to the government pushing for several electoral reforms, including making paid news an offence and increasing the punishment for filing a false affidavit to two years of imprisonment.

In June this year, the poll panel had written to the law ministry requesting it to urgently take up these pending electoral reforms, which also included allowing first-time voters to have multiple registration attempts in a year. Reports said that there were around 40 electoral proposals pending with the government.

The new voting reforms come at a time when assembly elections are due in several states next year, including Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.

The ECI had in August 2019 proposed wide-ranging electoral reforms, which included remote voting for NRIs and migrant workers, and eliminating duplication of voters. Earlier this year, the poll panel had started a research project for enabling remote voting in consultation with IIT Madras and eminent technologists from IITs and other leading institutions.

Former Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora, who demitted the office earlier this year, had expressed hope that the concept of remote voting will see “the light of day” by the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

In 2015, when the EC had launched the National Electoral Law Purification and Authentication Programme to link Aadhaar with the Voter ID, the initiative was halted following the Supreme Court’s directive that using Aadhaar would not be mandatory to avail of welfare schemes.

(With PTI inputs)

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