Aadhaar cards to be linked with voter-IDs, no clarification on data protection

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has told the Election Commission of India (ECI) that the Centre is preparing for legal alteration required to link Aadhaar cards with voter IDs, which would allow transparency in the electoral roll and remote voting from any part of the nation, a report in The Print said.

In a letter to the Union Law Ministry, ECI has proposed that provisions of the Representation of the People Act be amended to allow the ECI to seek Aadhaar numbers of those applying to be voters and those who are already part of the electoral rolls, sources in the poll panel explained.

In a meeting with Legislative Secretary G Narayan Raju, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora and fellow Commissioners Ashok Lavasa and Sushil Chandra also discussed linking of voters list or electoral roll with Aadhaar numbers to clean up duplicate entries, a poll panel statement said.

The Wire quoted a senior poll panel official as saying, that the ECI was working on a technology in collaboration with IIT-Madras that will allow people to vote from faraway places without going to the polling station of their respective constituencies.

According to The Wire, the ECI said, “The commission is keen to make use of the unique ID numbers provided by Aadhaar scheme for cleaning electoral rolls.”

“An error-free electoral roll forms the basis for a credible election,” the ECI added.

Accepting the proposal to give it legal backing to collect Aadhaar data, the Union Law Ministry is learnt to have asked the poll panel to ensure that the data is protected at multiple levels.

The ECI recently listed out steps to protect the data from possible leaks.

In spite of the multiple-level protection plan ensured by the Union Law Ministry, the trust deficit still remains, as several reports of data being leaked have been observed in the past.

Indian officials in charge of a controversial biometric identity scheme have filed a police complaint after a report that citizens' personal details were being sold for as little as ₹500 ($7.8;£5.8) online, according to a report by BBC.

The report added that payment of a further ₹300 provided "software" that allowed them to print out any Aadhaar card for which they had the number.

This exercise of leaking information was highlighted when the Indane Gas app leaked data of 6.7 million subscribers. Both the online portal and app were found to be at risk of vulnerability.

Such incidents of data leakage, point out the lack of security in the Aadhaar system.

(with PTI inputs)